“Mamma seems to worry for fear he is hurt.”

“Assure her solemnly that he hasn’t a scratch.  He is simply fighting mad, and I’m going to try and find the tramp.  Does Mrs. Maynard remember how he looked?”

“She could not see the face at all.  She heard some one at the shutters, and a voice, and supposed of course it was papa, and threw open the blind.”

“Oh, I see.  That’s all, Miss Alice.  I’ll go back to the colonel.  Good-night!” And Armitage went forth with a lighter step.

“One sensation knocked endwise, colonel.  I have it on the best of authority that Mrs. Maynard so fearlessly went to the window in answer to the voice and noise at the shutters simply because she knew you were out there somewhere and she supposed it was you.  How simple these mysteries become when a little daylight is let in on them, after all!  Come, I’m going to take you over to my room for a stiff glass of grog, and then after his trampship while you go back to bed.”

“Armitage, you seem to make very light of this night’s doings.  What is easier than to connect it all with the trouble at Sibley?”

“Nothing was ever more easily explained than this thing, colonel, and all I want now is a chance to get that tramp.  Then I’ll go to Sibley; and ’pon my word I believe that mystery can be made as commonplace a piece of petty larceny as this was of vagrancy.  Come.”

But when Armitage left the colonel at a later hour and sought his own room for a brief rest he was in no such buoyant mood.  A night-search for a tramp in the dense thickets among the bluffs and woods of Sablon could hardly be successful.  It was useless to make the attempt.  He slept but little during the cool August night, and early in the morning mounted a horse and trotted over to the railway-station.

“Has any train gone northward since last night?” he inquired at the office.

“None that stop here,” was the answer.  “The first train up comes along at 11.56.”

“I want to send a despatch to Fort Sibley and get an answer without delay.  Can you work it for me?”

The agent nodded, and pushed over a package of blanks.  Armitage wrote rapidly as follows: 

“CAPTAIN CHESTER,

“Commanding Fort Sibley.

“Is Jerrold there?  Tell him I will arrive Tuesday.  Answer.

“F.  ARMITAGE.”

It was along towards nine o’clock when the return message came clicking in on the wires, was written out, and handed to the tall soldier with the tired blue eyes.

He read, started, crushed the paper in his hand, and turned from the office.  The answer was significant: 

“Lieutenant Jerrold left Sibley yesterday afternoon.  Not yet returned.  Absent without leave this morning.

“CHESTER.”

XI.