He went down to his den and sat there thinking. What ought he to do? what should he do with this money? Every cent of it would be swallowed up if he squared those commissary accounts and turned the balance into checks and sent it off to pay these bills, and then if Mullane's bullet sped true to its mark, what would there be to take Laura and the baby North? "Home" he dared not say. She had no home: Collabone's diagnosis of that situation was correct. Then, too, if Mullane's pistol did not fail him, there would be no way in which that mysterious friend and beneficiary of his father's could ever be repaid. What right had he to use one cent of this money for any purpose whatever, when another day might be his last? Winn wished he still had the San Antonio check instead of these bulky packages of greenbacks. They were now locked up in Trott's safe, unbroken, pending action at Department Head-Quarters on the new schedule sent thither, based on the recovery of some of the damaged stores. He thought of it all as, long before gun-fire that morning, the black care of his life came and roused him from his fitful sleep and bade him face his daily, hourly torment. He had risen, and as he softly moved about the room, thoughtful for her, she slept on placidly as a happy child, soundly as slept the nurse and the little one in the adjoining room.
Donning his stable dress, he carried his boots into the hall and down the creaking stairs, and sat there, with solitary candle, at his desk, wearily jotting down inexorable figures. The dawn came stealing in the eastward window: from aloft a querulous little wail was uplifted on the stillness of the summer morning. There was no answering hush of loving, motherly voice. Laura could not stand wakeful nights. He tiptoed swiftly up again to rouse the nurse in case she too slept on, but he heard her hand beating drowsy time on the coverlet, and the soothing "Shoo, shoo, shoo," with which she communicated her own heaviness to her little charge. Laura had turned uneasily, he saw as he peeped in at the open doorway, but again slept soundly, her lovely face now full turned towards him, half pillowed on the white and rounded arm he used to kiss with such rapture in the touch of his lips. Her white brow was shaded by the curling wealth of her soft, shining hair. The white eyelids drooped their long curving lashes over the rounded cheeks, faintly tinged with the rosy hue of youth and health. The exquisite lips, warm, delicately moulded, parted just enough to reveal the white, even, pearly teeth. The snowy, rounded throat and neck and shoulders were enhanced in their beauty by the filmy fabric of her gown, beneath which her full bosom slowly rose and fell in healthful respiration. How beautiful she was, how fair a picture of almost girlish innocence and freedom from all worldly dross or care! Even now, in the light of all the gradual revelation of her shallow, selfish vanity, the heart of the man yearned over and softened to her. If he had only realized,--if he had only known more of the world and life and duty other than mere soldier obligation, how different all might have been! What right had he to ask her to be his wife? She should have wedded a man many years her senior,--one fitted to guide and direct her,--able to lavish luxury upon her. It wasn't all her fault that she had been so thoughtless, poor girl! What else had her mother been before her? What else could one expect of her? Would she miss him? he wondered. Not long,--not long, thank God! Beauty such as hers would soon win for her and baby home and comfort such as he could never give. That was all over. Something almost like a sob rose from his heart as he bent and softly touched with his lips the floating curl above her temple, then turned back to resume his work and reface his troubles. Thank God, Mullane's pistol would soon end them all and save him from the sin that was in his soul the day he took his own revolver with him. She was sleeping still when the morning gun shook the shutter of her window and he went forth to meet the sorrows of another day, as he had met those of the past,--alone.