Listening a while, she knocked,
timidly, hesitatingly, but no answer came. After a while, noiselessly,
she turned the knob and entered.
A dim light was burning on a little table by the white bedside. A
long, slim figure, white-robed and in all the abandon of girlish
grief, was lying, face downward, on the bed. Tangled masses of hair
concealed much of the neck and shoulders, but, bending over, Miss Wren
could partially see the flushed and tear-wet cheek pillowed on one
slender white arm. Exhausted by long weeping, Angela at last had
dropped to sleep, but the little hand that peeped from under the
thick, tumbling tresses still clung to an odd and unfamiliar
object--something the older woman had seen only at a distance
before--something she gazed at in startled fascination this strange
and solemn night--a slender, long-handled butterfly net of filmy
gauze.
CHAPTER IV
A STRICKEN SENTRY
Sentry duty at Camp Sandy along in '75 had not been allowed to bear
too heavily on its little garrison. There was nothing worth stealing
about the place, said Plume, and no pawn-shop handy. Of course there
were government horses and mules, food and forage, arms and
ammunition, but these were the days of soldier supremacy in that arid
and distant land, and soldiers had a summary way of settling with
marauders that was discouraging to enterprise.
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