The
doctor looked over the rooms a moment; then sent for Wilkins, the post
quartermaster, who came in a huff at being disturbed at lunch. Field had
been rather particular about his belongings. His uniforms always hung on
certain pegs in the plain wooden wardrobe. The drawers of his bureau
were generally arranged like the clothes press of cadet days, as though
for inspection, but now coats, blouses, dressingsack and smoking jacket
hung with pockets turned inside out or flung about the bed and floor.
Trousers had been treated with like contempt. The bureau looked like
what sailors used to call a "hurrah's nest," and a writing desk,
brass-bound and of solid make, that stood on a table by a front window,
had been forcibly wrenched open, and its contents were tossed about the
floor. A larger desk,--a wooden field desk--stood upon a trestle across
the room, and this, too, had been ransacked. Just what was missing only
one man could tell. Just how they entered was patent to all--through a
glazed window between the bed-room and the now unused dining room
beyond. Just who were the housebreakers no man present could say; but
Mistress McGann that afternoon communicated her suspicion to her
sore-headed spouse, and did it boldly and with the aid of a broomstick.
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