“Hm!” said the surgeon.  “Yes.  That’s plenty, steward.  Give him that.  Raise his head a little, corporal.  Now he’ll come round all right.”

Driving homeward that night, Colonel Maynard musingly remarked,—­

“Did you see that splendid fellow who fainted away?”

“No,” answered his wife, “you all gathered about him so quickly and carried him away.  I could not even catch a glimpse of him.  But he had recovered, had he not?”

“Yes.  Still, I was thinking what a singular fact it is that occasionally a man slips through the surgeon’s examinations with such a malady as this.  Now, here is one of the finest athletes and shots in the whole army, a man who has been through some hard service and stirring fights, has won a tip-top name for himself and was on the highroad to a commission, and yet this will block him effectually.”

“Why, what is the trouble?”

“Some affection of the heart.  Why!  Halloo!  Stop, driver!  Orderly, jump down and run back there.  Mrs. Maynard has dropped her fan.—­What was it, dear?” he asked, anxiously.  “You started; and you are white, and trembling.”

“I—­I don’t know, colonel.  Let us go home.  It will be over in a minute.  Where are Alice and Mr. Jerrold?  Call them, please.  She must not be out riding after dark.”

But they were not in sight; and it was considerably after dark when they reached the fort.  Mr. Jerrold explained that his horse had picked up a stone and he had had to walk him all the way.

IV.

There was no sleep for Captain Chester the rest of the night.  He went home, threw off his sword-belt, and seated himself in a big easy-chair before his fireplace, deep in thought.  Once or twice he arose and paced restlessly up and down the room, as he had done in his excited talk with Rollins some few hours before.  Then he was simply angry and argumentative,—­or declamatory.  Now he had settled down into a very different frame of mind.  He seemed awed,—­stunned,—­crushed.  He had all the bearing and mien of one who, having defiantly predicted a calamity, was thunderstruck by the verification of his prophecy.  In all his determined arraignment of Mr. Jerrold, in all the harsh things he had said and thought of him, he had never imagined any such depth of scoundrelism as the revelations of the night foreshadowed.  Chester differed from many of his brotherhood:  there was no room for rejoicing in his heart that the worst he had ever said of Jerrold was unequal to the apparent truth.  He took no comfort to his soul that those who called him cynical, crabbed, unjust, even malicious, would now be compelled to admit he was right in his estimate.  Like the best of us, Chester could not ordinarily say “Vade retro” to the temptation to think, if not to say, “Didn’t I tell you so?” when in every-day affairs his oft-disputed views were proved well founded.  But in the face