the commanding officer concurred, as a foraging party had that morning
discovered traces of Indians in the vicinity of the fort, and the lately
arrived commissary train had reported the unaccountable but promptly
prevented stampede.

Unfortunately, his sister Jenny appeared accompanied by her husband, who
seized an early opportunity to take Peter aside and confide to him his
anxiety about her health, and the strange fits of excitement under which
she occasionally labored. Remembering the episode of the Californian
woods three years ago, Peter stared at this good-natured, good-looking
man, whose life he had always believed she once imperiled, and wondered
more than ever at their strange union.

"Do you ever quarrel?" asked Peter bluntly.

"No," said the good-hearted fellow warmly, "never! We have never had a
harsh word; she's the dearest girl,--the best wife in the world to me,
but"--he hesitated, "you know there are times when I think she confounds
me with somebody else, and is strange! Sometimes when we are in company
she stands alone and stares at everybody, without saying a word, as
if she didn't understand them. Or else she gets painfully excited and
dances all night until she is exhausted. I thought, perhaps," he added
timidly, "that you might know, and would tell me if she had any singular
experience as a child,--any illness, or," he went on still more gently,
"if perhaps her mother or father"--

"No," interrupted Peter almost brusquely, with the sudden conviction
that this was no time for revelation of his secret, "no, nothing."

"The doctor says," continued Lascelles with that hesitating, almost