“And you took good care of the boy, you and Mrs. McGillicuddy,” said Broussard, who had learned of it from the letter written by Anita at Mrs. Lawrence’s request.  The Sergeant took off his cap for a moment, baring his grey head to the biting cold.

“The best we could, so help me God.  There wasn’t nothin’ me and Missis McGillicuddy could do for the kid as we didn’t do.  The chaplain told us we done too much, we was over-indulgent to the boy.  But we taught him to do right, although we give him better food and better clothes than any of our own eight children ever had, and now——­”

The Sergeant stood in silence for a moment, his cap once more in his hand, his head bowed.  Broussard knew he was giving thanks.

Broussard, under cover of the darkness, took his way to the quarters which Mrs. Lawrence had never left.  He knocked and, receiving no answer, entered the narrow passage-way and walked into the little sitting-room.  Lawrence lay back in the arm chair in which his wife had spent so many hours of helpless misery.  His face was paler than ever and his lank hair lay damp upon his forehead.  Mrs. Lawrence, who had been suffering from the cruel malady known as a shamed and broken heart, sat by her husband, speaking words of cheer and tenderness.  As Broussard entered she rose to her feet with new energy, no longer tottering as she walked, and placed both arms about Broussard’s neck.

“Oh, my brother!  The best of brothers,” she cried and could say no more for her tears.

Presently they were sitting together, all externally calm, but all filled with a tense emotion.

“Try to persuade her,” said Lawrence to Broussard, “to go away before the court-martial sits.  It will be too much for her.”

Mrs. Lawrence turned her dark eyes, once tragic but now brimming with light, full on Broussard.  Broussard said to Lawrence: 

“These angelic women are very obstinate.”

“Would your mother, of whom my husband has told me so much, go away if she were in my place?”

Both Broussard and Lawrence remained silent.

“Then,” said Mrs. Lawrence, “can you blame me if I act as your mother would act?”

Broussard took her hand and kissed it; the marks of toil upon it went to his soul.

“But the boy must be sent away,” cried Lawrence.

“Yes, he may go,” replied Mrs. Lawrence, “but I shall stay.”

It was nearly seven o’clock, the hour for dinner at the officers’ club, before Broussard left the Lawrences’ quarters.  All the men at the club were delighted to see Broussard, and all of them told him he looked seedy and every one who had served in the Philippines and had caught the jungle fever proposed a different regimen for him, but all agreed that Fort Blizzard was a good place to recuperate and that the “old man,” as the commanding officer is always called, was rather a decent fellow, and might let him stay, and then they plunged into