as jealously as a lover, and the other for the entire United States
Army. The Army returned her affection without the jealousy of the
father, and with much more than his effusiveness. But when Lieutenant
Ranson arrived from the Philippines, the affections of Mary Cahill
became less generously distributed, and her heart fluttered hourly
between trouble and joy.

There were two rooms on the first floor of the post-trader's--this
big one, which only officers and their women-folk might enter, and
the other, the exchange of the enlisted men. The two were separated
by a partition of logs and hung with shelves on which were displayed
calicoes, tinned meats, and patent medicines. A door, cut in one end
of the partition, with buffalo-robes for portieres, permitted Cahill
to pass from behind the counter of one store to behind the counter of
the other. On one side Mary Cahill served the Colonel's wife with
many yards of silk ribbons to be converted into german favors, on the
other her father weighed out bears' claws (manufactured in Hartford,
Conn., from turkey-bones) to make a necklace for Red Wing, the squaw
of the Arrephao chieftain. He waited upon everyone with gravity, and
in obstinate silence. No one had ever seen Cahill smile. He himself
occasionally joked with others in a grim and embarrassed manner. But
no one had ever joked with him. It was reported that he came from New
York, where, it was whispered, he had once kept bar on the Bowery for
McTurk.

Sergeant Clancey, of G Troop, was the authority for this. But when,
presuming on that supposition, he claimed acquaintanceship with
Cahill, the post-trader spread out his hands on the counter and
stared at the sergeant with cold and disconcerting eyes. "I never
kept bar nowhere," he said. "I never been on the Bowery, never been