"Your orders _were_ obeyed," answered the Captain. "I _did_ tell him."
"And what did he say?" asked the Colonel, lifting his eyebrows with some appearance of interest.
"He said," replied the Captain, enunciating his words very clearly, as if he had no objection to their producing their full weight on his superior--"That Colonel Egbert Crawford might go to h-ll, and he would go to Boston."
"Did he?--d--n him!" said the Colonel, who seemed to have a small bottle of profanity lately uncorked, or one that he certainly was not in the habit of uncorking in the presence of those on whom he wished to produce a different impression.
"Yes he did," answered the Captain. "He said a little more. Perhaps you would like to have _that_, while I am at it?"
"That?--yes, out with the whole of it!" spoke the Colonel, with another oath which need not be recorded here as any additional seasoning.
"He took occasion to remark, where the lady who was with him could hear it," Lowndes went on--"that he didn't care a d--n for you, and that you dare not make a complaint against him at Albany, a bit more than you dare jump into a place that is even hotter than the weather is here to-day."
"Did he--the infernal hound!" broke out the Colonel, his dark brows literally corrugated with rage. "I'll teach him whether I _dare_ or not, before I am forty-eight hours older!" But either there _was_ something behind the curtain, or Colonel Egbert Crawford was a man of most angelic temper, for the moment after he broke out into a laugh that was not of the most musical order and said: "Oh, well--Dalton is a pretty good fellow, after all, and perhaps the next Adjutant would be a worse one for the regiment."
With these words Colonel Egbert Crawford passed into the side room by the door of which he had been standing, while Captain Lowndes touched his hat to him very slightly and went on to the larger room towards which the others were proceeding. As the Colonel swung back the door, Smith caught a very quick glance within, and saw a table, with bottles, a pack of cards, a couple of dice-boxes, and four or five persons seated, lounging and smoking. The party appeared to him as if they might have been interrupted in a little harmless Sunday afternoon amusement, and as if they were only waiting for the return of the Colonel to the room, to renew that amusement in a very pleasant and effective manner. That impression was not removed by his hearing, after he had passed through the open door into the other room, a suspicious sound like the rattling of dice and another sound very like the chinking of coin, proceeding from the smaller apartment.