The Deserter

mitted to remain. For a woman who was notorious as a virago and bully, who had beaten little Kate from her babyhood and abused and hammered her Michael

edle most of his money away; but there was no cessation to the demand, no apparent limit to the supply. Both were growing older, and now it became evident that Mrs. Clancy was the elder of the two, and that the artificiality of her charms could not stand the test of frontier life. No longer sought as the belle of the soldiers' ball-rooms, she aspired to leadership among their wives and families, and was accorded that pre-eminence rather than the fierce battle which was sure to follow any revolt. She became avaricious,-some said miserly,-and Clancy miserable. Then began the downward course. He took to drink soon after his return from a long, hard summer's campaign with the Indians. He lost his sergeant's stripes and went into the ranks. There came a time when the new colonel forbade his re-enlistment in the cavalry regiment in which he had served so many a long year. He had been a brave and devoted soldier. He had a good friend in the infantry, he said, who wouldn't go back on a poor fellow who took a drop too much at times, and, to the surprise of many soldiers,-officers and men,-he was brought to the recruiting officer one day, sober, soldierly, and trimly dressed, and Captain Rayner expressed his desire to have him enlisted for his company; and it was done. Mrs. Clancy was accorded the quarters and rations of a laundress, as was then the custom, and for a time-a very short time-Clancy seemed on the road to promotion to his old grade. The enemy tripped him, aided by the scoldings and abuse of his wife, and he never

ho rescued and returned to her that precious packet of money. Everybody heard her, and it was out of the question for her to retract. Nevertheless, from within an hour after Clancy's admission to the hospital not another word of the kind escaped her lips. She was all patience and pity with the injured man, and she shunned all allusion to his preserver and her benefactor. The surgeon had been called away,

y: you must be quiet, or

ed? who was he going to

ulled ye out. He's a good one, and it's

d she, turning about

ulling him out of the fir

of all the saints be upon

rupted Clancy, half raising himself upon his elbow, and groa

ant Hayn

ncy, and fell back as th

ave him in pace? Go away, all of ye's,-go away, I say, or ye'll dhrive him crazy wid yer-Be quiet, Mike! don't ye spake agin." And she laid a bro

ted her stricken husband; but the watchers in the hospital the next nigh

Lieutenant Hayne was the man to whom the one owed his life and the other her money. Some one met Captain Rayner on the sidewalk the morning Stannard came marching home, and asked him if he had heard the queer story about Clancy. He had not, and it was told him then and there. Rayner did not even attempt to laugh at it or turn it off in any way. He looked dazed, stunned, for a moment, turned very white and old-looking, and, hardly saying good-day to his informant, faced about and went straight to his quarters. He was not among the crowd that gathered to welcome the incoming cavalrymen that bright, crisp, winter day; and that evening Mrs. Rayner went to the hospital to ask what she could do for Clancy and his wife. Captain Rayner always exp

tain saw fit to call. Mr. Hayne's eyes were seriously injured by the flames and heat, and he was

to read!" was the exclamation of one of the cavalry ladies in Mrs. Rayner's presence; an

Avenue I should conside

ome dozens of times and distorted quite as many, the generally accepted version of the story was that Mrs. Rayner, so far from expressing the faintest sympathy or sorrow for Mr. Hayne's misfortune, so far from expressing the natural gratification which a

l knew by this time that Mrs. Rayner was bitter against Hayne, and had heard of her denunciation of the colonel's action. So, too, had the colonel heard that she openly declared t

so many ladies in the garrison who would be glad to meet at her house and read to him by turns. He loved music, she heard, and there was her piano, and she knew several who would be delighted to come and play for him by the hour. He shook his head, and the bandages hid the tears that came to his smarting eyes. He had made arrangements to be read aloud to, he said; and as for music, that must wait awhile. The kind woman retired dismayed,-she could not understand such obduracy,-and her husband felt rebuffed. Stannard of the cavalry, too, came in with his gentle wife. She was loved throughout the regiment for her kindliness and grace of mind, as well as for her devotion to the sick and suffering in the old days of the Indian wars, and Stannard had made a similar proffer and been similarly refused, and he had gone away indignant. He thought Mr. Hayne too bumptious

Graham to say how deeply we regret your injurie

am stood with hearts that beat unaccountably hard, loo

ame at last,

ies do you all

s a blunt fellow, but, as the senior, had been chosen spokesman for the three. The a

uries at the fi

too painful. Ross looked in bewilderment at

ervice, Mr. Hayne. If there is anything we can

r to say?" asked the cal

e can say," faltered Ross

firm and prompt

s nothing tha

ok their departu

Ross's experience put an end to it all. It was plain that even now Mr. Hayne made the condition of

's or to Stannard's. He could have so many comforts and delicacies there that would be impossible here. He did not refer to edibles and drinkables

ut a host of things that used to be indispensable, and have abjured them one and all for a single luxury that I cannot live without,-the luxury of utter independence,