From the Ranks | Page 8

Leary! Why didn't you challenge at first?"
"Sure, sor, he lept inside the fince quick as iver we set eyes on each
other. He was bendin' down, and I thought it was one of the hound pups
when I first sighted him."
"And he hasn't been around since?"
"No, sor, nor nobody, till the officer of the day came along."
Chester walked away puzzled. Sibley was a most quiet and orderly
garrison. Night prowlers had never been heard from, especially over
here at the south and southwest fronts. The enlisted men going to or
from town passed across the big, high bridge or went at once to their
own quarters on the east and north. This southwestern terrace behind

the bachelors' row was the most secluded spot on the whole post,--so
much so that when a fire broke out there among the fuel-heaps one
sharp winter's night a year agone it had wellnigh enveloped the whole
line before its existence was discovered. Indeed, not until after this
occurrence was a sentry posted on that front at all; and, once ordered
there, he had so little to do and was so comparatively sure to be
undisturbed that the old soldiers eagerly sought the post in preference
to any other, and were given it as a peace privilege. For months, relief
after relief tramped around the fort and found the terrace post as
humdrum and silent as an empty church; but this night "Number Five"
leaped suddenly into notoriety.
Instead of going home, Chester kept on across the plateau and took a
long walk on the northern side of the reservation, where the
quarter-master's stables and corrals were placed. He was affected by a
strange unrest. His talk with Rollins had roused the memories of years
long gone by,--of days when he, too, was young and full of hope and
faith, ay, full of love,--all lavished on one fair girl who knew it well,
but gently, almost entreatingly, repelled him. Her heart was wrapped up
in another, the Adonis of his day in the gay old seaboard garrison. She
was a soldier's child, barrack-born, simply taught, knowing little of the
vice and temptations, the follies and the frauds, of the whirling life of
civilization. A good and gentle mother had reared her and been called
hence. Her father, an officer whose sabre-arm was left at Molino del
Rey, and whose heart was crushed when the loving wife was taken
from him, turned to the child who so resembled her, and centred there
all his remaining love and life. He welcomed Chester to his home, and
tacitly favored his suit, but in his blindness never saw how a few
moonlit strolls on the old moss-grown parapet, a few evening dances in
the casemates with handsome, wooing, winning Will Forrester, had
done their work. She gave him all the wild, enthusiastic, worshipping
love of her girlish heart just about the time Captain and Mrs. Maynard
came back from leave, and then he grew cold and negligent there, but
lived at Maynard's fireside; and one day there came a sensation,--a
tragedy,--and Mrs. Maynard went away, and died abroad, and a
shocked and broken-hearted girl hid her face from all and pined at
home, and Mr. Forrester's resignation was sent from--no one knew just

where, and no one would have cared to know, except Maynard. He
would have followed him, pistol in hand, but Forrester gave him no
chance. Years afterwards Chester again sought her and offered her his
love and his name. It was useless, she told him, sadly. She lived only
for her father now, and would never leave him till he died, and
then--she prayed she might go too. Memories like this will come up at
such times in these same "still watches of the night." Chester was in a
moody frame of mind when about half an hour later he came back past
the guard-house. The sergeant was standing near the lighted entrance,
and the captain called him:
"There's a ladder lying back of the colonel's quarters on the roadway.
Some of those painters left it, I suppose. It's a wonder some of the
reliefs have not broken their necks over it going around to-night. Let
the next one pick it up and move it out of the way. Hasn't it been
reported?"
"Not to me, sir. Corporal Schreiber has command of this relief, and he
has said nothing about it. Here he is, sir."
"Didn't you see it or stumble over it when posting your relief,
corporal?" asked Chester.
"No indeed, sir. I--I think the captain must have been mistaken in
thinking it a ladder. We would surely have struck it if it had been."
"No mistake at all, corporal. I lifted it. It is a long, heavy ladder,--over
twenty feet, I should