The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-12-17

out the ompanionship of that parents strict control, it was not to be won dered at if Frank came perilously near to being spoiled.
 After graduation from Columbia instead of from West Point, as the colonel would have desired if such a choice could have been realized In the natural course of events-Frank Haver- ill entered the banking house of the Towards, relatives of his stepmother. This had seemed a promising connec- tion-it might have led, possibly, to an- other matrimonial alliance through one of the pretty daughters of the family on whom the young clerk was known to have made a most favorable impress sion-when suddenly he ran away with and married Edith Maury, a nice enough girl, as it was said, but two or three years his senior and the daugh- ter of an impoverished southern family whose home was in New Orleans.
 This was bad enough. Still a rash love match is not in itself an unpar- donable sin. Frank was forgiven. At least truce was patched up and the prodigal son went back repentant, as it seemed, to his stool at the bank.
 Alas, the prodigal climax was yet to come. Its beginnings had dated back even to the college days. Edward Thornton had been much in New York then. He had first met the Haverills at Saratoga. Handsome, reckless, social favorfte and sportsman of no small pretensions, Thornton had im- mediately exercised over young Frank an influence amounting to fascination and hero worship. Those were flush times of racing, of gambling, of drink ing and-south of Mason and Dixon's line especially-of dueling. Thornton took the eager, precocious boy in hand and made a man Of him. It was such a man as the colonel, his fla ther, absent most of the time on west ern duty, never dreamed.
 Matters were in such strained rela- tions now when the colonel and his wife stopped at Charleston on their way north. And it was at this Hateful moment that the last stroke fell.
 The day before the Ellingham ball Colonel Haverill learned from the New York newspapers and simultaneously by letter from his lawyers there that his son was an absconder and a fugi- tive. Under suspicion on account of irregularities discovered at the Howard bank, he had fled, no one knew whith-
 
 serted and without resources.
 Colonel HaverilPs grief and rage were fearful.
 "And yet, hadn't I enough else on my mind just now without being brought to face thing like this? We'll, let fate deal with him. He deserves the worst that can happen. I am through with him. I have always done my best by him; now I have ether and more i'm portant duties to perform. I am an officer of the United States army"
 Don't judge him too hastily, John. May 1t not have been that it was only after another was dependent on him that the debts of a tnoughtless spend thrift-for he was nothing worse drove him to desperation-to fraud, perhaps-I will not believe crime"
 His wife shall be provided for-my lawyers have their Instructions" re piled the colonel curtly.
 Mrs. Haverill stole softly out of the room, closing the door behind her, passed through the spacious galleries and down the broad winding stairs tC the drawing room.
 Everywhere, as Mrs. HaVerill de scended after her troub1ous interview 1 with the colonel, the younger people were blissfully lounging or circulating about, still talking love and war. They had a new and breezy accession to their ranks in the person of Jenny Buckthorn, U. S. A. She was ths 1 daughter of bluff old General Franci, l Buckthorn of the regular army ana had been born and brought up in i military camp on the western plains. Were going to see active servic' now-sooner than you civilians seen | to suspect announced Jenny to an at | tentive group of listeners under tht front portico-, "Our boys are alread! 1 under marching orders in Washington Your General Beauregard is riding hi high horse, it seems. Tell him for m | that he'd better mind what he's doins or we'll have Heartsease down her 1 after him.
 'And who is Heartsease, prayY' in quired Gertrude EIlingham, who O late was developing an unwonted in terest in the federal military service.
 'Heartsease? Brevet Captain Hearts ease? Why, he is-one of my favorit cavalry officers. You'll hear about him.
 ''Yes-wherever Miss Buckthorn i for five minutes or so," whispered Bo1 1 Ellingham to Madeline West. q knov | Heartsease. Not bad fellow, but tn biggest flop that was ever misdealt int the cavalry. You ought to hear wha | General Buckthorn says about him
 Wears a single eyeglass at guar l mount, and carries scented lace hand | kerchief at cross country dri1l.''
 Gertrude Ellingham drew Jenn l aside and asked her:
 How is it to have a sweetheart wh 1 is a soldier?'
 Its all right answered Jenn
 promptly 'I wouldn't have a sweet
 heart who wasn't a soldier-a nortI ern soldier, of course."