The Girl at the Halfway House | Page 8

black lines, many a
man wondered, considering that he had discovered an Old-World
custom, and joining in the belief of the owner of the name that all the
world must know the identity of Battersleigh.
What were the financial resources of Battersleigh after the cessation of
his pay as a cavalry officer not even his best friends could accurately
have told. It was rumoured that he was the commissioner in America of
the London Times. He was credited with being a Fellow of the Royal
Geographical Society. That he had a history no one could doubt who
saw him come down the street with his broad hat, his sweeping cloak,
his gauntlets, his neatly varnished boots.
In reality Colonel Henry Battersleigh lived, during his city life, in a
small, a very small room, up more than one night of stairs. This room,
no larger than a tent, was military in its neatness. Battersleigh, bachelor
and soldier, was in nowise forgetful of the truth that personal neatness
and personal valour go well hand in hand. The bed, a very narrow one,
had but meagre covering, and during the winter months its single
blanket rattled to the touch. "There's nothing in the world so warm as
newspapers, me boy," said Battersleigh. Upon the table, which was a
box, there was displayed always an invariable arrangement. Colonel
Battersleigh's riding whip (without which he was rarely seen in public)
was placed upon the table first. Above the whip were laid the gauntlets,
crossed at sixty degrees. On top of whip and gloves rested the hat,
indented never more nor less. Beyond these, the personal belongings of

Battersleigh of the Rile Irish were at best few and humble. In the big
city, busy with reviving commerce, there were few who cared how
Battersleigh lived. It was a vagrant wind of March that one day blew
aside the cloak of Battersleigh as he raised his hat in salutation to a
friend--a vagrant wind, cynical and merciless, which showed somewhat
of the poverty with which Battersleigh had struggled like a soldier and
a gentleman. Battersleigh, poor and proud, then went out into the West.
The tent in which Colonel Battersleigh was now writing was an old one,
yellow and patched in places. In size it was similar to that of the
bedroom in New York, and its furnishings were much the same. A
narrow bunk held a bed over which there was spread a single blanket. It
was silent in the tent, save for the scratching of the writer's pen; so that
now and then there might easily have been heard a faint rustling as of
paper. Indeed, this rustling was caused by the small feet of the prairie
mice, which now and then ran over the newspaper which lay beneath
the blanket. Battersleigh's table was again a rude one, manufactured
from a box. The visible seats were also boxes, two or three in number.
Upon one of these sat Battersleigh, busy at his writing. Upon the table
lay his whip, gloves, and hat, in exactly the same order as that which
had been followed in the little chamber in the city. A strip of canvas
made a carpet upon the hard earthen floor. A hanging cloth concealed a
portion of the rear end of the tent. Such had been Battersleigh's quarters
in many climes, under different flags, sometimes perhaps more
luxurious, but nevertheless punctiliously neat, even when Fortune had
left him servantless, as had happened now. Colonel Battersleigh as he
wrote now and then looked out of the open door. His vision reached out,
not across a wilderness of dirty roads, nor along a line of similar tents.
There came to his ear no neighing of horses nor shouting of the
captains, neither did there arise the din of the busy, barren city. He
gazed out upon a sweet blue sky, unfretted by any cloud. His eye
crossed a sea of faintly waving grasses. The liquid call of a mile-high
mysterious plover came to him. In the line of vision from the tent door
there could be seen no token of a human neighbourhood, nor could
there be heard any sound of human life. The canvas house stood alone
and apart. Battersleigh gazed out of the door as he folded his letter. "It's
grand, just grand," he said. And so he turned comfortably to the feeding

of his mice, which nibbled at his fingers intimately, as had many mice
of many lands with Battersleigh.
CHAPTER V
THE TURNING OF THE ROAD
At the close of the war Captain Edward Franklin returned to a shrunken
world. The little Illinois village which had been his home no longer
served to bound his ambitions, but offered only a mill-round of duties
so petty, a horizon of opportunities so restricted, as to