“I am profoundly gratified to learn that somebody else is a brute,” he answered, trying to look grave, but with that irrepressible merriment twitching at the corners of his mouth and giving sudden gleams of his firm white teeth through the thick moustache.  “You are come to us just in time, Miss Renwick, and if you will let me come and tell you all my sorrows the next time the colonel pitches into me for something wrong in B Company, I’ll give you full permission to overhaul me for everything or anything I say and do to the youngsters.  Is it a bargain?” And he held out his big, firm hand.

“I think you are—­very different from what I heard,” was all her answer, as she looked up in his eyes, twinkling as they were with fun.  “Oh, we are to shake hands on it as a bargain?  Is that it?  Very well, then.”

IX.

When Captain Armitage left the cottage that night he did not go at once to his own room.  Brief as was the conversation he had enjoyed with Miss Renwick, it was all that Fate vouchsafed him for that date at least.  The entire party went to tea together at the hotel, but immediately thereafter the colonel carried Armitage away, and for two long hours they were closeted over some letters that had come from Sibley, and when the conference broke up and the wondering ladies saw the two men come forth it was late,—­almost ten o’clock,—­and the captain did not venture beyond the threshold of the sitting-room.  He bowed and bade them a somewhat ceremonious good-night.  His eyes rested—­lingered—­on Miss Renwick’s uplifted face, and it was the picture he took with him into the stillness of the summer night.

The colonel accompanied him to the steps, and rested his hand upon the broad gray shoulder.

“God only knows how I have needed you, Armitage.  This trouble has nearly crushed me, and it seemed as though I were utterly alone.  I had the haunting fear that it was only weakness on my part and my love for my wife that made me stand out against Chester’s propositions.  He can only see guilt and conviction in every new phase of the case, and, though you see how he tries to spare me, his letters give no hope of any other conclusion.”

Armitage pondered a moment before he answered.  Then he slowly spoke: 

“Chester has lived a lonely and an unhappy life.  His first experience after graduation was that wretched affair of which you have told me.  Of course I knew much of the particulars before, but not all.  I respect Chester as a soldier and a gentleman, and I like him and trust him as a friend; but, Colonel Maynard, in a matter of such vital importance as this, and one of such delicacy, I distrust, not his motives, but his judgment.  All his life, practically, he has been brooding over the sorrow that came to him when your trouble came to you, and his mind is grooved:  he believes he sees mystery and intrigue in matters that others might explain in an instant.”