no man had beaten Sloat.  Both officers had bullet-hole mementos to carry from that field; both had won their brevets for conspicuous gallantry, and Sloat was a happy and grateful man when, years afterwards, his old commander secured him a lieutenancy in the regular service.  He was the colonel’s henchman, although he never had brains enough to win a place on the regimental staff, and when Mrs. Maynard came he overwhelmed her with cumbrous compliments and incessant calls.  He was, to his confident belief, her chosen and accepted knight for full two days after her arrival.  Then Jerrold came back from a brief absence, and, as in duty bound, went to pay his respects to his colonel’s wife; and that night there had been a singular scene.  Mrs. Maynard had stopped suddenly in her laughing chat with two ladies, had started from her seat, wildly staring at the tall, slender subaltern who entered the gateway, and then fell back in her chair, fairly swooning as he made his bow.

Sloat had rushed into the house to call the colonel and get some water, while Mr. Jerrold stood paralyzed at so strange a reception of his first call.  Mrs. Maynard revived presently, explained that it was her heart, or the heat, or something, and the ladies on their way home decided that it was possibly the heart, it was certainly not the heat, it was unquestionably something, and that something was Mr. Jerrold, for she never took her eyes off him during the entire evening, and seemed unable to shake off the fascination.  Next day Jerrold dined there, and from that time on he was a daily visitor.  Every one noted Mrs. Maynard’s strong interest in him, but no one could account for it.  She was old enough to be his mother, said the garrison; but not until Alice Renwick came did another consideration appear:  he was singularly like the daughter.  Both were tall, lithe, slender; both had dark, lustrous eyes, dark, though almost perfect, skin, exquisitely-chiselled features, and slender, shapely hands and feet.  Alice was “the picture of her father,” said Mrs. Maynard, and Mr. Renwick had lived all his life in New York; while Mr. Jerrold was of an old Southern family, and his mother a Cuban beauty who was the toast of the New Orleans clubs not many years before the war.

Poor Sloat!  He did not fancy Jerrold, and was as jealous as so unselfish a mortal could be of the immediate ascendency the young fellow established in the colonel’s household.  It was bad enough before Alice joined them; after that it was wellnigh unbearable.  Then came the 3d-of-July dinner and the colonel’s one annual jollification.  No man ever heard of Sloat’s being intoxicated; he rarely drank at all; but this evening the reminiscences of the day, the generous wine, the unaccustomed elegance of all his surroundings, due to Mrs. Maynard’s taste and supervision, and the influence of Alice Kenwick’s exquisite beauty, had fairly carried him away.

They were chatting in the parlor, while Miss Renwick was entertaining some young-lady friends from town and listening to the band on the parade.  Sloat was expatiating on her grace and beauty and going over the album for the twentieth time, when the colonel, with a twinkling eye, remarked to Mrs. Maynard,—­