Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: m That ended the dance, but not the ex- citment. Women and girls were seeking their wraps even before the corporal came, and now went twittering homeward, each on the arm of her escort, except in the case of those allied forces, the wives of certain seniors, who long had lived, moved, and ruled in the regiment, and now in eager yet guarded tones were discussing the events of the hour gone by. With these went Mrs. Foster, her husband having joined the searching party, and her sleigh, instead of returning, being still missing and unaccounted for. Not yet midnight, and in the space of less than one hour all Fort Cushing had been stirred by the news. A most popular and prominent young officer had beenplaced in close arrest. A prominent, if not most popular, sergeant, had been pummelled. An alarming scene of some kind had occurred at the quarters of Captain Sumter. No one outside of the immediate family knew just what had happened, and those inside cared not to tell. Mrs. Sumter had hurried away the minute she learned that her husband had gone. The colonel, sternly silent, led his wife to their door, and there left her, saying he had summoned certain officers to join him at once, and she, who ruled him in all matters domestic almost as she managed the children, knew well that when roused he would brook no interference in matters professional, and Bob Lanier, a prime favorite of hers, had in some way managed to fall under the ban of his extreme displeasure. At the office were presently assembled the colonel, the adjutant, the quartermaster, the post surgeon, and to them came Paymaster Scott. At the "store," theonly club-room they had in those days, were gathered half the commissioned officers of tne post. At Sumter's there kept coming and going by twos and threes, from all alon...