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It moved restlessly backwards and forwards from one window to the other: now it shone out in the balcony above the street: now it retired into the darkness of the room. Clarice gauged Lady Cranston's impatience by her own, and experienced a fellow-feeling of sympathy.
The ball to be given by the townsfolk had been indefinitely postponed in deference to Colonel Stone's condition and the absence of so many dancing men in the field, but the weekly hops, although with thinned attendance, went regularly on. Now there were several households who did not attend at all, among them Cranston's, Leonard's, and Hay's.
It was the last day of Captain Wilbur Cranston's leave of absence.
"He can when ould Pegleg's a-pullin', Misther Sergeant Haney, and he's not to go anywhere else or talk with any one else furst off ayther," was the significant answer, another unpleasant item to impart to his now wretchedly uneasy captain; and verily it seemed to Haney that the halcyon days were done for good and all, when soon after dusk a little squad from Cranston's troop, with Second Lieutenant Sanders in command, rode briskly away on the Braska road, and it was speedily whispered about the garrison that they were going to find Paine, drunk or sober, dead or alive, and fetch him back to the post forthwith.
Up like a centaur he bounds against the sky line, up after him the long rank of ragged hat brims and blue-shirted, broad-belted, manly forms, up the plunging line of hard-tugging bays, their black tails streaming in the morning wind, and then Cranston's arm flings up aloft; up into plain view streams and flaps the silken guidon, the stars and stripes in swallow-tailed miniature that the troopers loved to see, and then the thud gives way to thunder, for as one man "C" troop strikes the gallop with the thronging Indian village not five hundred yards ahead.
Cranston's pillows when he returned. "Did you ascertain anything?" she asked. "Nothing. They all deny any knowledge of such a thing." "Do you know, I thought there was something strange about it. The man seemed hurried and excited, talked low and fast, and when Brannan refused or seemed to refuse what was asked, I heard him say, 'Well, you'll be a sorry man if you don't."
For unless he was very much mistaken and he felt sure that he was not that envelope he had picked up and handed to the President was the identical blue linen envelope that had been stolen with the tan satchel so mysteriously two weeks ago! The size of it, the feel of it, the daubs of gray sealing-wax Oh, there was no mistaking it! How in thunderation had it come into Cranston's hands?
Cranston and Miss Loomis mastered their own anxiety in the effort to comfort these weaklings, and as no sounds of battle came from the eastward, and the watchers on the roofs reported Red Dog's people as scattering for their tepees before the advance of the cavalry, comparative composure was gradually being restored when the first messenger came in from the front, a corporal of Cranston's troop, whom the boys hailed with eager acclaim.
Cranston's voice rings like the bugler's clarion mingling in the order "Charge!" and the welkin rings, the rocks re-echo to the grand burst of cheers with which "C" Troop goes tearing, thrashing into the heart of the village, swallowed up instantly in a dense cloud of dust.
He says he never saw anything calmer or braver in his life." "Yes, I remember our chaplain's indulging in some prognostication to that end," said Leonard, gravely; "but, Mrs. Cranston, did you want to see Mrs. Davies?" "Why, yes, assuredly." "Well, she isn't home, I think you'll find her at Mrs. Darling's." But Mrs. Cranston's humor changed. She decided to wait and see her later.
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