But Maynard only shook his head.  His heart was too troubled for rest of any kind.  He stood gazing out towards the park, where the tall figure of his ex-adjutant had disappeared among the trees.  He heard the low-toned, pleasant chat of the ladies in the sitting-room, but he was in no mood to join them.  He wished that Armitage had not gone, he felt such strength and comparative hope in his presence; but it was plain that even Armitage was confounded by the array of facts and circumstances that he had so painfully and slowly communicated to him.  The colonel went drearily back to the room in which they had had their long conference.  His wife and sister both hailed him as he passed the sitting-room door, and urged him to come and join them,—­they wanted to ask about Captain Armitage, with whom it was evident they were much impressed; but he answered that he had some letters to put away, and he must attend first to that.

Among those that had been shown to the captain, mainly letters from Chester telling of the daily events at the fort and of his surveillance in the case of Jerrold, was one which Alice had brought him two days before.  This had seemed to him of unusual importance, as the others contained nothing that tended to throw new light on the case.  It said,—­

“I am glad you have telegraphed for Armitage, and heartily approve your decision to lay the whole case before him.  I presume he can reach you by Sunday, and that by Tuesday he will be here at the fort and ready to act.  This will be a great relief to me, for, do what I could to allay it, there is no concealing the fact that much speculation and gossip is afloat concerning the events of that unhappy night.  Leary declares he has been close-mouthed; the other men on guard know absolutely nothing, and Captain Wilton is the only officer to whom in my distress of mind I betrayed that there was a mystery, and he has pledged himself to me to say nothing.  Sloat, too, has an inkling, and a big one, that Jerrold is the suspected party; but I never dreamed that anything had been seen or heard which in the faintest way connected your household with the matter, until yesterday.  Then Leary admitted to me that two women, Mrs. Clifford’s cook and the doctor’s nursery-maid, had asked him whether it wasn’t Lieutenant Jerrold he fired at, and if it was true that he was trying to get in at the colonel’s back door.  Twice Mrs. Clifford has asked me very significant questions, and three times to-day have officers made remarks to me that indicated their knowledge of the existence of some grave trouble.  What makes matters worse is that Jerrold, when twitted about his absence from reveille, loses his temper and gets confused.  There came near being a quarrel between him and Rollins at the mess a day or two since.  He was saying that the reason he slept through roll-call was the fact that he had been kept up very late at the doctor’s party, and Rollins happened to come in at the moment