“Who could it have been, sir?” asked the sergeant of the officer of the day.  “Surely none of the men ever come round this way.”

“I don’t know, sergeant; I don’t know.  Just take your lamp and see if there is anything visible down there among the rocks.  He may have been hit and leaped the wall.—­Do you think you hit him, Leary?”

“I can’t say, sor.  He came by me like a flash.  I had just a second’s look at him, and—­Sure I niver saw such runnin’.”

“Could you see his face?” asked Chester, in a low tone, as the other men moved away to search the rocks.

“Not his face, sor.  ’Twas too dark.”

“Was there—­did he look like anybody you knew, or had seen?—­anybody in the command?”

“Well, sor, not among the men, that is.  There’s none so tall and slim both, and so light.  Sure he must ‘a’ worn gums, sor.  You couldn’t hear the whisper of a footfall.”

“But whom did he seem to resemble?”

“Well, if the captain will forgive me, sor, it’s unwillin’ I am to say the worrd, but there’s no one that tall and light and slim here, sor, but Loot’nant Jerrold.  Sure it couldn’t be him, sor.”

“Leary, will you promise me something on your word as a man?”

“I will, sor.”

“Say not one word of this matter to any one, except I tell you, or you have to, before a court.”

“I promise, sor.”

“And I believe you.  Tell the sergeant I will soon be back.”

With that he turned and walked down the road until once more he came to the plank crossing and the passage-way between the colonel’s and Bachelors’ Row.  Here again he stopped short, and waited with bated breath and scarcely-beating heart.  The faint light he had seen before again illumined the room and cast its gleam upon the old gray wall.  Even as he gazed, there came silently to the window a tall, white-robed form, and a slender white hand seized and lowered the shade, noiselessly.  Then, as before, the light faded away; but—­she was awake.

Waiting one moment in silence, Captain Chester then sprang up the wooden steps and passed under the piazza which ran the length of the bachelor quarters.  Half-way down the row he turned sharply to his left, opened the green-painted door, and stood in a little dark hall-way.  Taking his match-box from his pocket, he struck a light, and by its glare quickly read the card upon the first door-way to his right: 

“MR. HOWARD F. JERROLD,

“——­th Infantry, U.S.A.”

Opening this door, he bolted straight through the little parlor to the bedroom in the rear.  A dim light was burning on the mantel.  The bed was unruffled, untouched, and Mr. Jerrold was not there.

Five minutes afterwards, Captain Chester, all alone, had laboriously and cautiously dragged the ladder from the side to the rear of the colonel’s house, stretched it in the roadway where he had first stumbled upon it, then returned to the searching-party on “Number Five.”