Trooper Tales — page 96: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

86 Two Women and a Soldier. drawn shades of the dining room. It was the voice of a young woman who is not certain that she is acting with judgment. The word she had uttered filled Venning with thoughts which pained. For an instant he had forgot- ten that he was his captain’s valet. The young woman advanced timidly toward him. That night, after the cavalryman had supped and de- parted, Miss Bishop crept into her father’s room. The gas had been lowered until its light did not equal the blaze of a match. The captain was deeply unconscious. Everything in the room was in perfect order. “Oh, that he should have to do such things for you,” murmured the young woman. Five minutes afterward she was locked in her own apartments. Meanwhile Venning slipped past the sentries, and up the iron stairway of the barracks to his cot. He stood in the dark by the window rolling a cigarette. Over in the captain’s quarters, across the parade grounds, a light was still shining upstairs. It was not in the captain’s room. When the cigarette- was so short that it burned Venning’s fingers che light still shone in the officer’s resi- dence. And so Trooper Venning met the daughter of his troop commander. Four months later the command received orders to re- pair at once to a point of embarkation. American soldiers were needed to simplify certain matters in Cuba. Al- most every day in those four months Venning had re- ceived a letter, addressed in a woman’s hand. Its post- mark bore the name of a Northern city. CONNIE IOOKS (S@)