Waterbury evening Democrat., 1906-03-19

olive branches, and here, as the last
 notes of tattoo went echoing away
 under the vast and spangled sky. one
 by ono her charges closed their
 dropping lids and dropped to sleep
 and left their gentle friend and
 reader to her own reflections.
 There was a soldier dance that
 night in one of the vacant mess
 rooms. FHnt's two companies were
 making the best of their isolation.
 and found, as is not utterly uncom-
 mon, quite few maids and matrons
 among the households of the absent
 soldiery quite willing to be consoled
 and comforted. There were bright
 lights, therefore, further along the
 edge of the steep, beyond those of
 the hospital, and the squeak of fiddle and drone of cello, mingled with the
 plaintive piping of the flute, were
 heard at intervals through the si- lence of the wintry night. No tramp
 of sentry broke the hush about the
 little rift between the heights-the major holding that none was neces- sary where there were sd many dogs most of the soldiers families had gone to the dance; all of the younger children were asleep; even the dogs were still. and so, when at ten o'clock Esther tiptoed from the children's
 bedside and stood under the star light, the murmur of the Platte was the only sound that reached her ears until away over at the southwest gate the night guards began the long-drawn heralding of the hour. "Ten o'clock and all's welf' it went from post to post along the west and Dorthward front. but when Number
 SIX, at the quarlermas,~.
 house near the southeast corne.
 should have taken mp the cry where
 it was dropped by Number Five, afar
 over near the flagstaff, there was
 unaccountable silence. Six did not
 utter a sound.
 Looking up from the level of Studs town" as it had earlier been named. Esther could see the black hulk of the storehouse close to the edge of the plateau. Between it's westward gable end and the porch of the his pital lay some 50 yards of open space, and through this gap now gleamed spangled section of the western heavens. Along the bluff, just under the crest, ran pathway that circled the southeastward corner and led away to the traders store, south of the post. Tradition had it that the track was worn by night raiders, bearing contraband fluids from store to barracks in the days before such traffic was killed by that common sense promoter of temperance-so- berness and chastity-the post ex- change. Along that bluff line, from the storeheuse toward the hospital, invisible, doubtless, from either build ing or from the bluff itself, but thrown in sharp relief against that rectangular inlet of starry sky, two black figures, crouching and bearing some long, flat object between them, swift and noiseless were speeding toward the hospital. The next in- stant they were lost in the black background of that building. Then, as suddenly and moment later, one of them reappeared, just for a mo- ment, against the brightly lighted southernmost window on the eastward -the window 6f the room that had been Beverly window of the room now given over to Eagle Wing. the Sioux the captive for whose safe keeping l special sentry within the building. md this strangely silent Number Six were jointly responsible. Then that silhouett.d figure was plotted from her sight in general for the lights within as suddenly went out.
 And at that very moment a sound 'mote upon the ear, unaccountable 1t that hour and at that side of the yarrison-hoofbeats swiftly coming Town in the hollow from the east ward bluff-hoofbeats and low, ex-