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.