father’s passionate and impulsive nature.  He loved a girl utterly beneath him, and would have married her when he was only twenty.  There is no question that he loved her well, for he refused to give her up, no matter what his father threatened.  They tried to buy her off, and she scorned them.  Then they had a letter written, while he was sent abroad under pretence that he should have his will if he came back in a year unchanged.  By Jove, it seems she was as much in love as he, and it broke her heart.  She went off and died somewhere, and he came back ahead of time because her letters had ceased, and found it all out.  There was an awful scene.  He cursed them both,—­father and mother,—­and left her senseless at his feet; and from that day to this they never heard of him, never could get the faintest report.  It broke Renwick,—­killed him, I guess, for he died in two years; and as for the mother, you would not think that a woman so apparently full of life and health was in desperate danger.  She had some organic trouble with the heart years ago, they tell her, and this experience has developed it so that now any great emotion or sudden shock is perilous.  Do you not see how doubly fearful this comes to us?  Chester, I have weathered one awful storm, but I’m old and broken now.  This—­this beats me.  Tell me what to do.”

The captain was silent a few moments.  He was thinking intently.

“Does she know you have that letter?” he asked.

Maynard shook his head:  “I looked back as I came away.  She was in the parlor, singing softly to herself, at the very moment I picked it up, lying open as it was right there among the roses, the first words staring me in the face.  I meant not to read it,—­never dreamed it was for her,—­and had turned over the page to look for the superscription.  There was none, but there I saw the signature and that postscript about the shots.  That startled me, and I read it here just before you came, and then could account for your conduct,—­something I could not do before.  God of heaven! would any man believe it of her?  It is incredible!  Chester, tell me everything you know now,—­even everything you suspect.  I must see my way clear.”

And then the captain, with halting and reluctant tongue, told his story:  how he had stumbled on the ladder back of the colonel’s quarters and learned from Number Five that some one had been prowling back of Bachelors’ Row; how he returned there afterwards, found the ladder at the side-wall, and saw the tall form issue from her window; how he had given chase and been knocked breathless, and of his suspicions, and Leary’s, as to the identity of the stranger.

The colonel bowed his head still deeper, and groaned aloud.  But he had still other questions to ask.

“Did you see—­any one else at the window?”

“Not while he was there.”

“At any time, then,—­before or after?” And the colonel’s eyes would take no denial.