little else. Mr. Hayne had spent three or four years in the exile of a
little "two-company post" far up in the mountains. Except the officers
there stationed, none of his comrades had seen him during that time. No
one of them would like to admit that he would care to see him. And yet,
when once in a while they got to talking among themselves about him, and
the question was sometimes confidentially asked of comrades who came
down on leave from that isolated station, "How is Hayne doing?" or,
"What is Hayne doing?" the language in which he was referred to grew by
degrees far less truculent and confident than it had been when he first
went thither. Officers of other regiments rarely spoke to the "Riflers"
of Mr. Hayne. Unlike one or two others of their arm of the service, this
particular regiment of foot held the affairs of its officers as
regimental property in which outsiders had no concern. If they had
disagreements, they were kept to themselves; and even in a case which in
its day had attracted wide-spread attention the Riflers had long since
learned to shun all talk outside. It was evident to other commands that
the Hayne affair was a sore point and one on which they preferred
silence. And yet it was getting to be whispered around that the Riflers
were by no means so unanimous as they had been in their opinion of this
very officer. They were becoming divided among themselves; and what
complicated matters was the fact that those who felt their views
undergoing a reconstruction were compelled to admit that just in
proportion as the case of Mr. Hayne rose in their estimation the
reputation of another officer was bound to suffer; and that officer was
Captain Rayner.

Between these two men not a word had been exchanged for five years,--not
a single word since the day when, with ashen face and broken accents,
but with stern purpose in every syllable, Lieutenant Hayne, standing in
the presence of nearly all the officers of his regiment, had hurled this