and that was enough to warrant giving him the cold shoulder.  He was quick to see and take the hint, and, in bitter distress of mind, to withdraw himself from their companionship.  He had hoped and expected that his eagerness to go with them on the wild and sudden campaign would reinstate him in their good graces, but it failed utterly.  “Any man would seek that,” was the verdict of the informal council held by the officers.  “He would have been a poltroon if he hadn’t sought to go; but, while he isn’t a poltroon, he has done a contemptible thing.”  And so it stood.  Rollins had cut him dead, refused his hand, and denied him a chance to explain.  “Tell him he can’t explain,” was the savage reply he sent by the adjutant, who consented to carry Jerrold’s message in order that he might have fair play.  “He knows, without explanation, the wrong he has done to more than one.  I won’t have anything to do with him.”

Others avoided him, and only coldly spoke to him when speech was necessary.  Chester treated him with marked aversion; the colonel would not look at him; only Armitage—­his captain—­had a decent word for him at any time, and even he was stern and cold.  The most envied and careless of the entire command, the Adonis, the beau, the crack shot, the graceful leader in all garrison gayeties, the beautiful dancer, rider, tennis-player, the adored of so many sentimental women at Sibley, poor Jerrold had found his level, and his proud and sensitive though selfish heart was breaking.

Sitting alone under the trees, he had taken a sheet of paper from his pocket-case and was writing by the light of the rising moon.  One letter was short and easily written, for with a few words he had brought it to a close, then folded and in a bold and vigorous hand addressed it.  The other was far longer; and over this one, thinking deeply, erasing some words and pondering much over others, he spent a long hour.  It was nearly midnight, and he was chilled to the heart, when he stiffly rose and took his way among the blanketed groups to the camp-fire around which so many of his wearied comrades were sleeping the sleep of the tired soldier.  Here he tore to fragments and scattered in the embers some notes and letters that were in his pockets.  They blazed up brightly, and by the glare he stood one moment studying young Rollins’s smooth and placid features; then he looked around on the unconscious circle of bronzed and bearded faces.  There were many types of soldier there,—­men who had led brigades through the great war and gone back to the humble bars of the line-officer at its close; men who had led fierce charges against the swarming Indians in the rough old days of the first prairie railways; men who had won distinction and honorable mention in hard and trying frontier service; men who had their faults and foibles and weaknesses like other men, and were aggressive or compliant, strong-willed or yielding, overbearing or meek, as are their brethren in other walks of life;