The disposal of the expensive impedimenta which Broussard had accumulated gave him much trouble. He did not value them greatly, and without much thought determined to give his costly rugs and lamps and glass and china to the Lawrences—they were originally used to that sort of thing and Broussard was in no fear of the Colonel's misunderstanding it, or any one else, for that matter, as it had been well known that there was some tie or association between Broussard and Lawrence in their childhood.

The scattering of costly gifts by a very free-handed person is usually most indiscreet, and Broussard was no exception to the rule. He presented his finest motor to a brother officer, who had to support a wife and children on a captain's pay and could not afford to support the motor besides. The game chickens, the beloved of Broussard's heart, he presented to another officer, whose wife objected seriously to cock-fighting. The chaplain, seeing the grand piano was about to be thrown away on anybody who could take it, managed to secure it for the men's reading-room. The thing which perplexed Broussard most was, what to do with Gamechick. He longed to give the horse to Anita but dared not. However, fate befriended him in this matter and Anita got Gamechick by other means. When Colonel Fortescue came home for the cup of tea that Mrs. Fortescue was always waiting to give him at five o'clock, with the sweet looks and tender words that made the hour so happy, he mentioned, in an off-hand way, Broussard's orders and that he was leaving the next day. Neither the father nor the mother looked toward Anita, sitting a little in the shadow of the dim drawing-room. Mrs. Fortescue, by way of making conversation, said:

"I wonder what he will do with his motors and horses and game chickens, and all those beautiful things he has in his quarters?"

"Oh, that's easy enough to tell," answered Colonel Fortescue. "All these young officers who load themselves up with that kind of thing act just alike. As soon as they are ordered somewhere else they throw away these things. They call it giving, but it is merely largesse."

"I wish," said Anita, in a soft, composed voice, "that I could have Gamechick. I can't help loving the horse that might have killed me and did not. Daddy, if I give up half my allowance for every month until I pay for him, would you buy him for me?"

Colonel Fortescue was quite as well able as Broussard to own Gamechick, but Anita had been brought up with a wholesome economy.

"I think so, my dear," replied the Colonel, gravely.

It would, in reality, have taken Anita's modest allowance for a couple of years to buy Gamechick. Mrs. Fortescue said as much.

"It would take all your allowance for a long time, Anita, to buy Gamechick. The horse has a pedigree longer than mine, and I have often noticed that ancestors are worth a great deal more to horses than to human beings."

"Oh, the price can be managed," said the Colonel, good naturedly. "Broussard's horses will probably be sold for a song."

Gamechick was not sold for a song, however, but for an excellent price. Colonel Fortescue was not the man to buy a good horse for a song of any man, least of all one of his own subalterns. When Broussard got the Colonel's note containing an offer for Gamechick, he laughed with pleasure, although he was not in a laughing mood.

"I should like to own the horse," the Colonel's note ran, "which, together with your fine horsemanship, saved my daughter's life, and he is well worth my offer."

Broussard would have given all of his other possessions at Fort Blizzard if he could have made Anita a gift of the horse, but the next best thing to do was, to sell him to her father. Broussard felt sure that Anita would ride Gamechick and there was much solid comfort in that, for an officer's charger, which carries him in life and is led behind his coffin in death, is near and dear to him. So, Broussard lost not a moment in accepting the Colonel's offer for Gamechick.

It was quite midnight before Broussard, with the assistance of his soldier attendant, had got those of his belongings which he intended to take with him sorted out and packed up. He dismissed the man and in the midst of his disordered sitting-room settled himself for his last cigar before turning in for the night. At that moment he heard a tap at the door, and opening it, Lawrence was standing on the threshold. He entered, taking off his cap and loosening his heavy uniform greatcoat. Once he had been a handsome fellow, but he had danced too long to the devil's fiddling, and that always spoils a man's looks.

For the first time, Lawrence seemed to forget the distance between the private soldier and the officer. He sat down heavily, without waiting for an invitation, and turned a haggard face on Broussard.

"So you are going," said Lawrence.

"Yes," replied Broussard.

Broussard saw that Lawrence was oppressed at the thought, there would be no more Broussard to help him pay the post trader's bills and to give him a good word when he got into trouble with the non-coms.

Broussard handed him a box of cigars and Lawrence absently took one. It was a very expensive cigar, as Broussard's things were all expensive. Lawrence, after rolling it in his fingers for a moment, laid it down.

"It's a shame not to be able to smoke such a brand as that," he said, "but the truth is, I can't stand tobacco to-night. It makes me nervous instead of soothing me."

Broussard, lighting a cigar for himself, looked closely at Lawrence, whose face was pallid and his eye sombre and uneasy.

"What's the trouble? More bills at the post trader's?" asked Broussard.

"Worse," replied Lawrence, becoming more agitated as he spoke. "My wife—the best wife that ever lived—has been traced here by her people. Of course, my name isn't Lawrence, and there was some trouble in finding her. They want her to leave me, and offer to provide for her and the boy. The work is killing her—you see how pale and thin she is—and the boy hasn't the chance he ought to have. They are worth more than a broken and beaten man like I am. But ever since I married her I've led a fairly decent life—she is the one creature who can keep me a little on this side of the jail. If she leaves me, I'm lost. What shall I do?"

Lawrence rose to his feet, and stood, trembling like a leaf. Broussard rose, too. By some strange, psychic foreknowledge, Broussard knew that some disclosure, poignant and even vital to himself, was then to be made by Lawrence. It came in Lawrence's next words, dragged out of him, as it were, by a force like that which drags the soul from the body.

"I ask you this," cried Lawrence, "in the name of our mother, for you and I, Victor Broussard, are brothers of the half blood."

By that time, Lawrence was weeping convulsively. Broussard's lighted cigar dropped to the floor, and lay there smoldering.

"But—but—" stammered Broussard, "my half-brother, my mother's son by her first marriage, died when I was a boy. My mother wore mourning for him."

"Yes," answered Lawrence, recovering himself a little, "she thought I was dead when I was in double irons for mutiny on a merchant ship. It was one of God's mercies that she thought me dead when I was living a life that would have been worse than death to her. Look you, I have disobeyed and defied and disgraced the God that made me, but I have never ceased to believe in Him. And, blackguard that I was and am, I had the best mother, and I have the best wife——"

There was a tense silence for a minute. Through all the bewildering and overwhelming thoughts that were crashing through Broussard's brain, but one thing was clear and unshakable, the deathless loyalty that a son owes to his mother.

"Of course," said Broussard, in a cool and resolute voice, "I'll stand by my mother's son, for my mother's sake. I was always puzzled at your knowledge of my parents, but I want some actual proof of what you say. Not for myself, you understand, but for others."

"Here it is," said Lawrence, taking a small, thin gold ring from his little finger. "When my mother married your father, I was fourteen years old. She gave me the wedding ring my father had given her; she put it on my finger and it has never been removed since—but I will take it off to show to you."

Lawrence pulled the ring off and Broussard, under the glare of the electric lamp, read the initials and the date he had seen in the family record. Then, handing the ring back, Broussard studied Lawrence's haggard face. Lawrence, answering the unspoken words, said:

"I was always thought like my mother, and the boy is the image of her."

A sudden illumination flooded Broussard's mind with light. He recalled the child's face, frank and handsome—a face that had always appealed to him so strongly, and so strangely. Yes, it was the call of the blood, and instantly the mysterious attraction the boy had for him developed into the affection of a kinsman.

"If you could see my wife and talk with her," continued Lawrence, recovering himself a little. "I can't urge her to leave me, but I think in common justice to her somebody ought to put the thing before her."

"Certainly," replied Broussard.

He was turning things rapidly in his mind. It would never do, after the Colonel's warning, to go to Lawrence's quarters, and he said so.

"It would look as if I had called for a farewell visit to your wife, when I haven't time to pay any calls except to the C. O.," said Broussard, after a moment. "But I will see the Colonel in the morning and try to arrange, through him, an interview with your wife."

"But don't, for God's sake, tell who I am," cried Lawrence. "Don't tell it, for the sake of our mother's memory. It isn't necessary."

"No, it is not necessary," replied Broussard. He was full of brotherly pity for Lawrence, his respect and sympathy for Mrs. Lawrence suddenly changed into the love of a brother for a sister, and the little boy became dear to him in the twinkling of an eye.

A silence fell between the two men, which was broken by Broussard.

"Couldn't you get a discharge from the army?"

"No," answered Lawrence, "there are too many black marks against me—not enough to turn me out, but enough to keep me in. However, I've kept soberer and acted straighter since I've been an enlisted man than for a long time past; the non-coms. know how to handle men like me. And I'm a good aviator, and they want to keep me."

"At all events," said Broussard, taking Lawrence's hand, "I'll look out for your wife and child. The boy shall have his chance—he shall have his chance, the jolly little chap!"

Then, standing up, the two men embraced as brothers do, and felt their mother's tender spirit hovering over them.

The next morning, while Colonel Fortescue was at breakfast, a note was handed to him by Broussard's soldier attendant. It read:

"Last night I had a visit from Lawrence. He has a great affection for his wife and child, and wanted me to talk with his wife about a family matter in which he feels he can not advise her. Can you kindly suggest some way by which I may have a private talk of a few minutes with Mrs. Lawrence?"

Colonel Fortescue scribbled on the back of the note:

"Come to my office in my house at ten o'clock and I will have Mrs. Lawrence here."

Broussard felt a little chagrined when he received this note. Suppose Anita should see him? She had already seen Mrs. Lawrence put her hand on his shoulder. There was, however, no gainsaying the C. O., and at ten o'clock Broussard rang the bell at the Commandant's house. Sergeant McGillicuddy opened the door for him and showed him into the little office across the hall, saying:

"Them's the Colonel's orders, sir."

At the same moment Mrs. Lawrence, pale, beautiful and stately, walked in from the back entrance. As she and Broussard met in the sunny hall, brimming with the morning light, Anita walked down the stairs and came face to face with Broussard and Mrs. Lawrence.

Broussard's dark skin turned dull red; Mrs. Lawrence, calmly unconscious, bowed to Anita, who, in her turn, bowed and passed on; her head, usually with a graceful droop, was erect; she radiated silent displeasure. Then Broussard and Mrs. Lawrence entered the office and Broussard closed the door. He was full of discomfort and chagrin, but it did not make him forgetful of the pale woman before him.

Mrs. Lawrence sat down in a chair; it was plain that she was not strong. Broussard, taking her hand, said to her affectionately:

"Last night Lawrence told me all. Remember, after this, that you and he have a brother, and the boy will be to me as a son."

The slow tears gathered in Mrs. Lawrence's eyes and fell upon her thin cheeks.

"My husband told me when he came home last night. I can't express what I feel—but the boy shall remember you in his innocent prayer."

"It's the boy I want to speak about," said Broussard, "Lawrence tells me that you have a chance of going back to your own people and that you are breaking down under the hard work of a soldier's wife. You can never get used to it."

"Perhaps not," replied Mrs. Lawrence, calmly, "especially as I was brought up to have a French maid. But I don't intend to leave my husband. I love him too well. Don't ask me why I love him so. I couldn't explain it to you to save my life, but I will say that since the day we were married—I ran away to marry him—he has never spoken an unkind word to me. He had nothing to give me except his love, but he has given me that. Whatever his faults may be as a soldier, he has been a good husband to me."

"A good husband!"

Broussard involuntarily repeated the words, marvelling and admiring the constancy, the self-delusion, the blind devotion of the woman before him.

"A loving husband, I should have said," said Mrs. Lawrence, a faint color coming into her face, "But my resolution is made. What you said about helping the boy only fixes it firmer, because it did seem as if his only chance would be thrown away."

The conversation had not lasted five minutes but Broussard saw that five decades of persuasion would not move Mrs. Lawrence. Besides, he had spoken to her from a profound sense of justice; in his heart, the tie of blood between him and Lawrence made him wish that the wife should continue to stand by the husband.

They both rose, feeling that the matter was settled inevitably. Broussard took from his breast pocket a roll of notes.

"It is better for you than bank checks," he said; "when this is gone, write to me and there will be more. Lawrence feels, as I do, that for the sake of our mother's memory it would be better that his identity should not be revealed."

A vivid blush flooded Mrs. Lawrence's face. Her woman's pride was cut to the quick and Broussard, seeing it, said quickly:

"It was his suggestion, not mine."

Then, taking Mrs. Lawrence's hand, Broussard gave her a brother's kiss, which she returned as a sister might, and they passed out of the office. In the hall Broussard left cards for Colonel and Mrs. Fortescue and Anita. Kettle, having heard that Broussard was leaving, came out of the dining-room, where he had been washing dishes, and wiping his hands on his long checked gingham apron, offered a friendly grasp to Broussard.

"I ain' goin' ter let Miss 'Nita furgit you, suh," Kettle whispered, "doan' you be skeered of Mr. Conway—he treat Miss 'Nita same like he did when she wear her hair down her back."

Broussard inwardly thought that perhaps Conway's plan was best. But he gave Kettle a confidential wink and a bank note.

"Some day I'll come back, Kettle, and then——"

Broussard did not finish the sentence in his own mind. Anita had seen just enough to prejudice a young, innocent girl against him.

Outside the door, a trooper was holding Gamechick by the bridle, delivering the horse to his new master.

"Good-bye, good horse," said Broussard, patting Gamechick's neck. "You did me the best turn any creature, man or beast, ever did me, and I promise never to forget my obligations to you."

Horses are sentimental creatures. Gamechick knew that Broussard's words were a farewell. He turned his large, intelligent eyes on Broussard, saying as plainly as a horse can speak:

"Good-bye, good master. Never will I, your faithful horse, forget you."

Broussard, walking rapidly off, in the bright January morning, turned around for one last glimpse at the house that held Anita. At that moment the great doors of the Commandant's house opened, and Anita, with a long crimson cloak around her and a hood over her head, ran down the broad stone steps to where Gamechick was standing like a bronze horse, the best-trained and best-mannered and best-bred cavalry charger at Fort Blizzard. Anita put her arm about his neck and rubbed her cheek against his satin coat, Gamechick receiving her caresses with dignity, as a cavalry charger should, and not with the tender bondings and nosings for lumps of sugar, like Pretty Maid. The last glimpse Broussard had of Anita was, as she stood, her arm about Gamechick's neck, her crimson mantle falling away from her graceful shoulder.



"How much simpler," thought Broussard, as he buttoned his heavy fur coat, for the ride to the station, "is love for a horse, for a child, for anything created, than love for a woman! No man gets out of that business without complications, and when the woman is half a child, an idealist, precocious, an angel with a devil lurking somewhere about her, it's the most complicated thing on this planet!"

Broussard carried these thoughts with him through the frozen Northwest, across the sapphire seas, and into the jungles of the tropics, to which he was destined.



CHAPTER V

UNFORGETTING

"As the passing of leaves, so is the passing of men." Thus it was with Broussard. Another man came to take his place; his once luxurious quarters, now plainly furnished, were occupied by another officer, his fighting cocks had disappeared, and Gamechick became a lady's mount. Anita quite gave over riding Pretty Maid, and rode Gamechick every day. She had some of the superstitions of the Arabs about horses, and when she dismounted, she always whispered something in the horse's ear. The words were:

"We won't forget him, Gamechick, although he has forgotten us."

At this, Gamechick would turn his steady, intelligent eyes on her, and nod, as if he understood every word. Colonel Fortescue and Mrs. Fortescue noticed this little trick of Anita's and looked at each other in silent pity for the girl. She suddenly developed amazing energy, working hard at her violin lessons and delighting Neroda by her progress, reading and studying until Mrs. Fortescue took the books away from her, going to all the dances, doing everything that her young companions did, and many things which they did not. She became the chaplain's right hand for work among the soldiers' children, and from daybreak until she went to bed at night Anita was ever employed at something and throwing into that something wonderful force and perseverance. One thing became immediately noticeable to Colonel and Mrs. Fortescue; this was that Anita never spoke Broussard's name from the hour he left Fort Blizzard.

"It is only a girl's fancy; she will get over it," said Mrs. Fortescue to the Colonel.

"She would if she were like most girls, but I tell you, Betty, this child of ours, this devoted, obedient little thing, has more mind, more introspection, than any young creature I ever knew. There is the making of a dozen tragedies in her."

"It is you who are too introspective and too tragic about her," answered Mrs. Fortescue, and the Colonel, recognizing the germ of truth in his wife's words, remained silent for a moment. Then he said:

"It's the sky and the snow and this altitude, and being shut in from all the world that make everything so tense. On these far-off, ice-bound plains, life is abnormally vivid. We are all keyed up too high here."

Mrs. Fortescue, seeing Anita reading often, and getting many books from the post library, glanced at the literature that crowded the table in Anita's sunny bed room. They were of two sorts—books of passionate poetry and books about the Philippines, their geography, their history, the story of the natives, "the silent, sullen peoples, half savage and half child," tales of the creeping, crawling, stinging things that make life hideous in the jungles, all these was Anita studying. Mrs. Fortescue said nothing of this to the Colonel, but recalled that Broussard was in the Philippines, and Anita's soul was there, although her body was at Fort Blizzard. In a book of her own, Anita had written her name, in the firm, clear hand that belonged to thirty rather than to seventeen, and these words:

"This I, who walk and talk and sleep and eat here, is not I. It is but my body; my soul is with the Beloved."

Mrs. Fortescue said nothing of this to the Colonel, but the trend of Anita's reading was unexpectedly revealed at one of the stately and handsome dinners that were given weekly at the Commandant's house during the season. When the officers were in the smoking-room a question of the geography of the Philippines came up, and was not settled. Colonel Fortescue called for a book on the subject, which was in Anita's room. Anita herself brought it, and hovered for a moment behind her father's chair; the subject of the Philippines had a magic power to hold her.

Not even the book gave the desired information and Anita leaned over and whispered into her father's ear:

"Daddy, I can tell you about it."

"Do," answered the Colonel, smiling, and turning to his guests, "This young lady will interest us."

Anita, whose air was shy and her violet eyes usually downcast, was the least shy and the most courageous creature imaginable. She got a map, and, spreading it out on the table, pointed out the true solution, and produced books to explain it. The officers, all mature men, listened with interest and amusement, complimenting Anita, and telling her she ought to have an officer's commission. Colonel Fortescue beamed with pride; no other girl at the post had as much solid information as Anita.

When the guests were gone and Anita was lying wide awake in her little white bed, thinking of Broussard, Colonel Fortescue, in the pride of his heart, was telling Mrs. Fortescue about it, as he smoked his last cigar in his office.

"It was great!" said the Colonel. "The child knew her subject wonderfully. She sat there, talking with men who had served in the Philippines, and they said she knew as much as they did."

"Broussard is in the Philippines," replied Mrs. Fortescue quietly.

Colonel Fortescue dashed his cigar into the fireplace and remained silent for five minutes.

"At any rate," he said presently, "The child's love affair hasn't made a fool of her. She is actually learning something from it. That's where she is so far ahead of most young things of her age."

"She will be eighteen next spring," said Mrs. Fortescue.

The mention of Anita's age always made the Colonel cross; so nothing more was said between the father and mother about Anita that night. But the Colonel yearned over the beloved of his heart, nor did he classify Anita's silent and passionate remembrance of Broussard with the idle fancies of a young girl; it was like Anita herself, of strong fibre.

The winter wore on, and the whirlpool of life surged in the far-distant post, as in the greater centres of life. The chaplain, an earnest man, found men and women more willing to listen to him, than in any spot in which he had ever spoken the message entrusted to him. Perhaps the aviation field had something to do with it; the people in the fort were always near to life and to death. The chaplain disliked to find himself watching particular faces in the chapel when he preached the simple, soldierly sermons on Sundays, and was annoyed with himself that he always saw, above all others, Anita Fortescue's gaze, and that of Mrs. Lawrence, as she sat far back in the chapel. Anita's eyes were full of questionings, and dark with sadness; but Mrs. Lawrence, in her plain black gown and hat, sometimes with Lawrence by her side, always with the beautiful boy, sitting among the soldiers and their wives, embodied tragedy. The chaplain sometimes went to see Mrs. Lawrence; she was a delicate woman, and often ill, and the chaplain was forced to admire Lawrence's kindness to his wife, although in other respects Lawrence was not a model of conduct. As with Mrs. McGillicuddy, and everybody else at the fort, Mrs. Lawrence maintained a still, unconquerable reserve. One day, the chaplain said to Anita:

"I hear that Lawrence's wife is ill. Could you go to see her? You know she isn't like the wives of the other enlisted men, and that makes it hard to help her."

Anita blushed all over her delicate face. She felt a deep hostility to Mrs. Lawrence; she had seen Broussard with her twice, and each time there was an unaccountable familiarity between them. But women seek their antagonists among other women, and Anita felt a secret longing to know more about this mysterious woman.

"Certainly I will go," answered Anita. "My father is very strict about letting me intrude into the soldier's houses—he says it's impertinent to force one's self in, but I know if you ask me to go to see Mrs. Lawrence my father will think it quite right."

The Colonel stood firmly by his chaplain, who was a man after his own heart, and that very afternoon Anita went to Mrs. Lawrence's quarters. The door was opened by the little boy, Ronald, whom Anita knew, as everybody else did. The girl's heart beat as she entered the narrow passage-way in which she had seen Broussard and Mrs. Lawrence standing together, and it beat more as she walked into the little sitting-room, where Mrs. Lawrence sat in an arm chair at the window. She was evidently ill, and the knitting she was trying to do had fallen from her listless hand.

The Colonel's daughter was much embarrassed, but the private soldier's wife was all coolness and composure.

"The chaplain asked me to come to see you," said Anita, standing irresolute, not knowing whether to stay or to go.

"Thank you and thank the chaplain also," replied Mrs. Lawrence. Then she courteously offered Anita a seat.

Anita had meant to ask if Mrs. Lawrence needed anything, but she found herself as unable to say this to Mrs. Lawrence as to any officer's wife. All she could do was to pick up the knitting and say:

"Perhaps you will let me finish this for you. I can knit very well."

It was a warm jacket for the little boy, who needed it. Mrs. Lawrence's coldness melted a little.

"Thank you," she said, "there is not much to be done on it now."

With that oblique persuasion, Anita took up the jacket, and her quick fingers made the needles fly. Her glance was keen, and although apparently concentrated on her work, she saw the strange mixture of plainness and luxury in the little room. The floor was covered with a fine rug, and a little glass cupboard shone with cut glass and silver.

The two women talked a little together but Mrs. Lawrence showed her weariness by falling off to sleep in the chair. The little boy went quietly out, and Anita sat knitting steadily in the silent room. The setting sun shone upon Mrs. Lawrence's pale face, revealing a beauty that neither time nor grief nor hardship could wholly destroy.

Involuntarily, Anita's eye travelled around the strange-looking room. On the mantel was a large photograph; Anita's heart leaped as she recognized it to be Broussard. It was evidently a fresh photograph, and a very fine one. Broussard stood in a graceful attitude, his hand on his sword, looking every inch the beau sabreur. Anita became so absorbed that her hand stopped knitting; it was as if Broussard himself had walked into the room.

Presently she felt, rather than saw, a glance fixed upon her. Mrs. Lawrence was wide awake, lying back in her chair, her dark eyes bent on Anita, whose hands lay idle in her lap.

The gaze of the two women met, for Anita was a woman grown in matters of the heart. She imagined she saw pity in Mrs. Lawrence's expression. Instantly, she began to knit rapidly. She wished to talk unconcernedly, but the words would not come. Broussard's association with the pallid woman before her was a painful mystery to Anita. Jealousy is a plant that springs from nothing, and grows like Jonah's gourd in the minds of women.

Anita was too innocent, too rashly confident in the honor of all the other women in the world to think any wrong of the woman before her. But it was enough that Mrs. Lawrence knew Broussard well, and was in communication with him—a strange thing between an officer and the wife of a private soldier, even if the soldier be of a station unusual in the ranks. Ever in Anita's heart smouldered the joy of the words Broussard had spoken to her under thousands of eyes on that memorable night of the music ride, and the sharp pain that came from Broussard's saying no more.

In a few minutes the jacket was done, and Anita rose. It required all her generosity as well as justice to say to Mrs. Lawrence:

"If I can do anything for you, please let me know."

"I thank you," replied Mrs. Lawrence. "You have already done much for me and for Ronald."

Then Anita went out into the dusk, and in her soul was rebellion. Youth was made for joy and she was robbed of her share. Anita was scarcely eighteen and deep-hearted.

In Mrs. Fortescue's room, Anita found Mrs. McGillicuddy, engaged in one of the comfortable chats that always took place between the Colonel's lady and the Sergeant's wife at the After-Clap's bed-time. As Sergeant McGillicuddy kept the Colonel informed of the happenings at the fort, so Mrs. McGillicuddy, who had great qualifications, and would have made a good scout, kept Mrs. Fortescue informed of all the news at the fort, from Major Harlow, the second in command, down to the smallest drummer boy in the regiment. Mrs. Fortescue being nothing if not feminine, she and Mrs. McGillicuddy were "sisters under their skins."

Anita's face was so grave that Mrs. Fortescue said to her tenderly—one is very tender with an only daughter:

"Is anything troubling you, dear?"

"Nothing at all," replied Anita, "I went to see Mrs. Lawrence, as the chaplain asked me, and finished a little jacket she was knitting for her boy. She doesn't seem very strong."

"And I dessay," said Mrs. McGillicuddy, who had held Anita in her arms when the girl was but a day old, "you saw all that cut glass and the rugs, as Mr. Broussard give to Lawrence. Them rugs! They're fit for a general's house. It seems to me it oughter be against the regulations for privates to have such rugs when sergeants' wives has to buy rugs off the bargain counter."

Mrs. McGillicuddy stood stiffly upon her rank as a sergeant's wife and believed in keeping the soldiers' wives where they belonged.

"I don't fancy Mr. Broussard is living in luxury himself just now," said Mrs. Fortescue. And Mrs. McGillicuddy's kind heart, being touched with remorse for having given Broussard a pin prick, hastened to say:

"No, indeed, mum, for McGillicuddy heard Major Harlow readin' a letter from Mr. Broussard, and he says as how he lives on bananas and has got only two shirts, and his striker has to wash one of 'em out every day for Mr. Broussard to wear the next day. McGillicuddy says that Major Harlow says that Mr. Broussard says that he don't mind it a bit, and he's glad to see real service and proud to command the men that is with him, and they behaves splendid."

Anita fixed her eyes on Mrs. McGillicuddy's honest, rubicund face, and listened breathlessly as Mrs. McGillicuddy continued:

"And Mr. Broussard says the Philippines is one big hell full of little hells, and nobody can get warm there in winter, or cool in summer, but there's lots of life to be seen there, and he's a-seein' it. And Blizzard is so far away, he can't sometimes believe there ever was such a place."

Suddenly, without the least warning, a quick warm gush of tears fell on Anita's cheeks. They were so far apart, the jungles and the icy peaks, the palm tree on the burning sands, and the pine tree in the frozen mountains! Anita walked quickly out of the room. Mrs. McGillicuddy, soft-hearted as she was hard-handed, looked at Mrs. Fortescue. The mother's eyes were moist; Anita was very unlike her, but Mrs. Fortescue remembered a period in her own young life when she, too, felt that the world was empty because of the absence of the Beloved. And suppose he had never come back? Mrs. Fortescue, remembering the brimming cup of happiness that had been hers merely because the man she loved came back, felt a little frightened for Anita. The girl was so precocious, so passionate—and how difficult and baffling are those women whose loves are all passion!

Anita baffled her mother still more, by appearing an hour later in a gay little gown, and taking the After-Clap from his crib and dancing with him until he absolutely refused to go to sleep. Then, Anita was in such high spirits at dinner that the Colonel told Mrs. Fortescue in their nightly talk while the Colonel smoked, he believed Anita had completely forgotten Broussard. At this, Mrs. Fortescue smiled and remained as silent as the Sphinx.

The winter was slipping by, and work and study and play went on in the snow-bound fort, and Colonel Fortescue was congratulating himself upon the wonderfully good report he could make of his command. There had not been a man missing in the whole month of February. But one day Lawrence, the gentleman-ranker, was reported missing.

The Colonel had no illusions concerning broken men and said so to Mrs. Fortescue.

"The fellow has deserted—that's the way most of the broken men end. He was in the aviation field yesterday and his going away was not premeditated, as he did not ask for leave. But something came in the way of temptation, and he couldn't stand it, and ran away."

The "something" was revealed by Sergeant McGillicuddy, with a pale face, while he was shut up with the Colonel in his office.

"It's partly my fault, sir," said the Sergeant. "The fellow has been doing his duty pretty well, and yesterday, on the aviation field, the aviation orficer was praisin' him for his work. You know, sir, how I likes the machines and studies 'em at odd times. The flyin' was over and there wasn't anybody around the sheds but Lawrence and me. I was lookup at his machine, and, no doubt, botherin' him, an he says sharp-like:

"'You can't understand these machines. It takes an educated man like me to understand 'em. They're more complicated than buggies.' That made me mad, sir, and I says, 'That's no way to speak to your Sergeant.' 'You go to the devil,' says Lawrence. 'You'll get ten days in the guard house for that,' I says. Then Lawrence seemed to grow crazy, all at once. 'Yes,' he shouts, like a lunatic, 'that's a fit punishment for a gentleman. You'll see to it, Sergeant, that I get ten days in the guard house, and my wife breakin' her heart with shame, and the other children tauntin' my boy!' With that, sir, he hit me on the side of the head with his fist. I was so unprepared that it knocked me down, but I saw Lawrence runnin' toward the station. I picked myself up and went and sat down on the bench outside the sheds to think what I ought to do. I knew, as well as I know now, that Lawrence was runnin' away, and I had drove him to it. But I swear, sir, before my Colonel and my God, that I didn't mean to make Lawrence mad, or misuse him in any way. You know my record, sir."

"Yes," answered Colonel Fortescue, his pity divided among Lawrence and his wife, and the honest, well-meaning McGillicuddy, who had brought about a catastrophe.

"For God's sake, sir," said McGillicuddy, "wiping his forehead, be as easy on Lawrence as you can, and give me a day—two days—leave to hunt him up."

This the Colonel did, warning McGillicuddy not to repeat what had occurred on the aviation plain.

The Sergeant got his leave, and another two days, all spent in hunting for Lawrence. There was nowhere for him to go except to the little collection of houses at the railway station. No one had seen Lawrence board the train that passed once a day, but a man, even in uniform, can sometimes slip aboard a train without being seen. The Sergeant came back, looking woe-begone, and Lawrence was published on the bulletin board as "absent without leave."

The shock of Lawrence's departure quite overcame his unhappy wife. She took to her bed and had not strength to leave it.

Sergeant McGillicuddy begged that he might be allowed to tell to the chaplain the provocation he had given Lawrence, who might tell Mrs. Lawrence. The blow struck by Lawrence was the act of a mad impulse, and having struck an officer, Lawrence might well fear to face the punishment. This the Colonel permitted, and the chaplain, sitting by Mrs. Lawrence's bed, told her of it, and of Sergeant McGillicuddy's remorse. Until then, Mrs. Lawrence, lying in her bed, had remained strangely tearless, although a faint moan sometimes escaped her lips. At the chaplain's words she suddenly burst into a rain of tears.

"My husband never meant to desert," she cried between her sobs. "He was doing his duty well—his own Sergeant said so. He must have been crazy when he struck the blow!"

"Poor McGillicuddy," said the chaplain quietly. "The Colonel has forbidden him to speak of it to any one, and he is breaking his heart over it."

No word of forgiveness came from Mrs. Lawrence's lips.

"It is the way with all of them, officers and men, they were all down on my husband because they thought he had done something wrong," said Mrs. Lawrence, with the divine, unreasoning love of a devoted woman.

"Mr. Broussard was not down on your husband," said the chaplain.

"True," replied Mrs. Lawrence, and then shut her lips close. If any one wished to know the secret bond between Broussard and Lawrence, one could never find it out from Mrs. Lawrence.

Sergeant McGillicuddy could keep from Mrs. McGillicuddy the details of what had occurred on the aviation field, but he could not conceal from her the fact that he was unhappy and conscience-stricken. All he would say to his wife was:

"I've done a man a wrong. I never meant it, as both God and the Colonel know." McGillicuddy had a way of bracketing the Deity with commanding officers, and did it with much simplicity and meant no irreverence.

"And I know it too, Patrick," replied Mrs. McGillicuddy, with the faith of a true wife in her husband.

"I'd tell you all about it, Araminta," said the poor Sergeant, "but the Colonel forbid me, and orders is orders."

"I know it," answered Mrs. McGillicuddy, "and I'll trust you, Patrick, I won't ever ask you the name because I can guess it easy. It's Lawrence."

The Sergeant groaned.

"If you can do anything for Mrs. Lawrence," he said, "or the boy——"

"I'll do it," valiantly replied Mrs. McGillicuddy, and straightway put her good words into effect.

Lawrence had then been missing five days. It was seven o'clock in the evening, and Mrs. McGillicuddy had already put the After-Clap to bed when she started for Mrs. Lawrence's quarters. There was no one to open the door, and Mrs. McGillicuddy walked unceremoniously into the little sitting-room, where the boy sat, silent and lonely and frightened, by the window. Mrs. McGillicuddy spoke a cheery word to him, and then passed into the bedroom beyond. The light was dim but she could see Mrs. Lawrence lying, fully dressed, on the bed. At the sight of Mrs. McGillicuddy she turned her face away.

"Come now," said Mrs. McGillicuddy undauntedly, "I think I know why you don't want to see me. Well, Patrick McGillicuddy is as good a man as wears shoe-leather, but every Sergeant that ever lived has made some sort of a mistake in his life. So Patrick wants me to do all I can for you until something turns up, and I hope that something will be your husband—and my husband will be mighty easy on him at the court-martial."

Mrs. Lawrence made no reply. Then Mrs. McGillicuddy went into the little kitchen, and stirring up the fire soon had a comfortable meal ready, and calling to the little boy, gave him his first good supper in the five days that had passed since his father came no more.

"You'd feel sorry for McGillicuddy if you could see him," Mrs. McGillicuddy kept on, ignoring Mrs. Lawrence's cold silence. "And recollect, if you feel sorry for your husband, I feel sorry for mine. 'Taint right to keep the little feller here while you can't lift a hand to do for him, so I'm goin' to take him to my house, with my eight children, because there's luck in odd numbers, and I'll feed him up, pore little soul, and wash him and mend him, and start him to playin' with Ignatius and Aloysius, for children ought to play, and Patrick 'll come every morning and start your fire, although he is a Sergeant, and we want to help you, and you must help us."

Mrs. Lawrence was not made of stone, and could not forever resist Mrs. McGillicuddy's kindness, and so it came about that the McGillicuddys took care of Lawrence's boy, whose face grew round and rosy with the generous McGillicuddy fare. A part of Mrs. McGillicuddy's good will to him was that she instructed Ignatius and Aloysius McGillicuddy, both excellent fist fighters for their age, that they were to lick any boy, no matter what his age or size, who dared to taunt little Ronald about his father or anything else. These orders were extremely agreeable to the McGillicuddy boys, who loved fighting for fighting's sake, and who sought occasions to practise the manly art.

Colonel Fortescue sent word to Mrs. Lawrence that she could occupy her quarters until she was able to make some plan for the future. It seemed, however, utterly indefinite when Mrs. Lawrence would be able to plan anything. She lay in her bed or sat in her chair, silent, pale, and as weak as a child. The blow of her husband's desertion seemed to have stopped all the springs of action. Neither the chaplain, the post-surgeon, nor Mrs. McGillicuddy, singly or united, could rouse Mrs. Lawrence from the deadly lassitude of a broken heart. Both the chaplain and the surgeon had seen such cases, and nothing in the pharmacopoeia could cure them.

Mrs. Fortescue, whose heart was not less tender from long dwelling on the airy heights of happiness and perfect love, was full of sympathy for Lawrence's unfortunate wife, and would have gone to see her, but Mrs. McGillicuddy, who delivered the message, brought back a discouraging reply.

"She says, mum, as she don't need nothin' at all, and I think, mum, she kinder shrinks from the orficers' wives more than from the soldiers' wives."

Anita, who was sitting by, went to her mother and, putting her arms around Mrs. Fortescue's neck, whispered:

"Mother, let me go to see Mrs. Lawrence. I don't think she will mind seeing me. You and daddy are always telling me that I am only a child."

Mrs. Fortescue took Anita in her lap, as if the girl were indeed the age of the After-Clap.

"Do what you like, dear child," she said. "Girls like you can do some things that women can't, because you have the enormous advantage of not knowing anything."



CHAPTER VI

SOME LETTERS AND KETTLE'S ENLISTMENT

Anita, who could plan things quite as well as if she were forty instead of eighteen, bided her time until the hour when Mrs. McGillicuddy was putting the After-Clap to bed. Then the girl slipped away and took the road to the long street of the married men's quarters. An icy fog swept from the Arctic Circle, enveloped the world, hiding both moon and stars, and made the great arc lamps look like little points of light in the great ocean of white mist. Every step of the way Anita's heart and will battled fiercely together. Broussard knew Mrs. Lawrence in some mysterious way. Perhaps he had loved her once; Anita was all a woman, and at seventeen was learned in the affairs of the heart.

This woman, however, between whom and Broussard some strong link was forged, Anita knew not when, nor how, nor where, was ill and poor and suffering, and Anita's natural inclinations were merciful. Besides, she had been taught by her father and mother the great lessons of life in kindness and tenderness. She had seen her father give up a party of pleasure to walk behind the pine coffin of a private soldier, and her mother had robbed her greenhouse of its choicest blossoms to lay a wreath on a soldier's grave.

By instinct, rather than sight, Anita stopped in front of the right door and met the chaplain coming out.

"Glad to see you, Anita," said the chaplain, who was muffled up to his eyes. "Go in and talk to that poor lady. We all want to help her, but we find it hard, for she will tell nothing of herself, of her family, or anything, except that she knows Lawrence didn't mean to desert, and will yet report himself."

In the plain little bedroom Mrs. Lawrence lay on her bed, the shaded electric light by her bedside showing her thin face, made more pallid by the great braids of lustrous black hair that fell about her. A look of faint surprise came into her languid eyes as Anita drew a chair to her bed and took her hand.

"My mother sent me," Anita said, gently, "to ask if I could do anything for you."

Mrs. Lawrence murmured her thanks, and then hesitated for a moment, the words trembling upon her lips.

"Yes," she said, "you can do something for me. Something I haven't asked anybody to do. I tried to ask the chaplain just now—he is a kind man, and tries to help me but for some reason my courage failed; I don't know why, but I didn't ask him. It is, to write a letter for me."

"Certainly I will write a letter for you," said Anita.

"It is to Mr. Broussard," answered Mrs. Lawrence.

The thought of writing to Broussard startled and overwhelmed Anita. She glanced about her nervously, fearing Mrs. Lawrence's words had been overheard, and stammered and blushed. But the woman, lying wan and weak in the bed, did not notice this.

"I am not strong enough to dictate it exactly as I want," said Mrs. Lawrence, "and you will have to write it at your own home. But I am very anxious for you to write to Mr. Broussard for me and tell him that my husband is missing and will soon be posted as a deserter; that I don't know where he is, but I am sure he will return. Don't tell Mr. Broussard how ill I am, but just say that the Colonel has let me stay on here, and the boy is well. Mr. Broussard is my husband's best friend; they were playmates in boyhood."

A dead silence fell between the woman and the girl and lasted for some minutes. Anita was already composing the letter in her mind.

"Perhaps before I go I can do something else for you," she said presently.

"No, everything has been done for me, and Mrs. McGillicuddy brings the boy over every night to tell me good-night. What you can do for me is to write the letter, as I asked you, and post it to-night. It can't reach Mr. Broussard in less than a month, perhaps two months. The last letter I received from him he was in some wild place a long distance from Guam, but he will get the letter eventually, if he lives."

Anita rose and walked back home through the icy mist. Mrs. Fortescue was in the shaded drawing-room seated at her harp, playing soft chords and arpeggios, with Colonel Fortescue leaning over her chair. If was a picture Anita had often seen, and at those times, from her childhood and from Beverley's, they were made to feel that they were secondary, and even the After-Clap was superfluous. Nevertheless, Anita walked into the room. The Colonel and Mrs. Fortescue started apart like young lovers.

"I have been to see Mrs. Lawrence," said Anita, "and she asked me if I would write a letter for her. She didn't, of course, tell me not to say anything about it to you, mother and daddy, but I would rather not tell you to whom the letter is to be written. You must trust me, my own dear daddy. It is a very simple letter, just to say that Lawrence has disappeared and Mrs. Lawrence and the little boy are in kind hands."

"Of course we trust you," answered Colonel Fortescue, smiling. "You are a very trusty person, Anita."

"Like my father and mother," answered Anita, and ran out of the room. As they heard her light step tripping up the stairs, the father and mother looked at each other with troubled eyes.

"It is to Broussard," said the Colonel, remembering his last interview with him. "I think Broussard steadily befriended Lawrence and his wife."

Mrs. Fortescue's candid eyes grew clouded.

"It is a strange intimacy," she said.

"It's all right," unhesitatingly replied the Colonel.

"Oh, well," said Mrs. Fortescue, touching the harpstrings, "If you are fomenting a love affair between Anita at Fort Blizzard and Broussard in the tropics, it is your affair."

"Elizabeth," said the Colonel, "I am not a person to foment love affairs, or any other private and personal affairs."

"I said if you were fomenting a love affair, John," replied Mrs. Fortescue; and then there was no more music from the harp, the Colonel going into his office and Mrs. Fortescue to the After-Clap's nursery.

In her own little room Anita was already hard at work on her letter to Broussard. It was a very short and simple letter, telling exactly, and only, what Mrs. Lawrence had asked, and it was signed "Sincerely Yours." But when it was to be sealed Anita's insurgent heart cried out to be heard, and she added a little postscript, which read:

"Gamechick is very well and sends his love. I ride him nearly every day."

Anita would not trust her precious letter to the mail orderly, or even Sergeant McGillicuddy or Kettle, but throwing her crimson mantle around her, she slipped out, in the cold mist, to the letter box. For one moment she held the letter poised in her hand before it took its flight toward the tropics; Anita's tender heart went with the letter.

A fortnight later, the March sun having come in place of the February snows, Mrs. McGillicuddy succeeded in dragging Mrs. Lawrence out of doors, one day about noon, and after placing her on a bench in the glow of the light, went off to look after the eight McGillicuddys, the little Lawrence boy, and the After-Clap, none of whom could have got on without her. Colonel Fortescue, coming out of the headquarters building, and going to his own house, passed Mrs. Lawrence, sitting on the bench. The Colonel, who knew her well enough by sight, raised his cap and, stopping a moment, asked courteously after her health.

"I am better," replied Mrs. Lawrence, "and I want to thank you for your kindness in letting me stay in the quarters. I will not trespass any longer than I can help."

"May I ask," said the Colonel, kindly, "if you have any friends with whom I could help you to communicate?"

Mrs. Lawrence smiled as she answered:

"I have relatives, if that is what you mean. But I do not care to communicate with them. Please understand me that I do not, for a moment, admit that my husband is a deserter."

"I wish I could think he was not," said Colonel Fortescue, "but unfortunately, his misconduct——"

Colonel Fortescue caught himself; he had done what he seldom did—used the wrong word. Mrs. Lawrence struggled feebly to her feet, the divine obstinacy of a loving woman shining in her melancholy eyes.

"Stop!" she cried, "I can't allow any one, even the Colonel of the regiment, to disparage my husband before my face."

"I beg your pardon," said Colonel Fortescue, "I regret the word I used."

Mrs. Lawrence, inclining her head, sank, rather than sat, upon the bench.

"Perhaps I should not have spoken so," she said, in a composed voice, "as my husband was only a private, and you are the Colonel; but I think you understand that I was neither born nor reared to this position."

"I do understand," replied Colonel Fortescue, "and some one has done you a very great wrong in bringing you to this post; but you may depend upon it that neither you nor your child shall suffer for the present, and I hope you will soon be well."



"It is my heart that is more ill than my body," replied Mrs. Lawrence, and the Colonel passed on.

The tragedy of a desertion is very great, and as Colonel Fortescue said, tragedies grow more intense in the fierce cold of winter, and Mrs. Lawrence and the beautiful little boy were, in themselves, living tragedies. Sergeant McGillicuddy, too, had a tragic aspect. In spite of all the Colonel could say, the Sergeant still accused himself of being the cause of Lawrence's desertion. McGillicuddy's bronzed face, like a hickory nut, grew so haggard, his self-reproaches so piteous, that Colonel Fortescue thought it well to give him a positive order to say nothing of the circumstances that led up to Lawrence's striking him. The Sergeant begged to be allowed to tell the chaplain about it; to this Colonel Fortescue consented, and McGillicuddy had a long conversation with the chaplain.

"The Colonel says, sir," McGillicuddy declared mournfully to the chaplain, "as it is the damned climate,—excuse me, sir,—that makes everybody queer."

"I'll excuse you," replied the chaplain, who had the same opinion of the Arctic cold as Colonel Fortescue. "I think the cold gets on men's nerves and makes them queer."

However, the chaplain had the power to console, and McGillicuddy became a trifle more resigned, and even had a faint hope of Lawrence's return, caught from Mrs. McGillicuddy's report of Mrs. Lawrence's fixed belief that Lawrence would come back and give himself up. One great consolation to the Sergeant was, to spend a large part of his pay in comforts for Mrs. Lawrence and clothes and books and toys for the little Ronald. Mrs. McGillicuddy, who had reasoned out a very good solution of McGillicuddy's troubles, encouraged him in his kindness to Mrs. Lawrence and the boy, so that the old rule of God making the devil work for Him was again illustrated; much good came to those whom Lawrence had deserted.

The chaplain thought it a good time to preach a sermon on loyalty, and on the very Sunday after Colonel Fortescue had talked with Mrs. Lawrence, the congregation that crowded the chapel heard an exposition of what loyalty meant, especially loyalty to one's country. Among the most attentive listeners was Kettle, whose honest black face glowed when the chaplain proclaimed that every man owed it to his country to defend it, if required. When the congregation streamed out of the chapel, Mrs. Fortescue stopped a moment to congratulate the chaplain on his sermon. Behind her stood Kettle, who was never very far away from Miss Betty.

"I listen to that sermon, suh," said Kettle, earnestly, to the chaplain, "and it cert'ny wuz a corker, suh."

"That is high praise," answered the chaplain, "I would rather an enlisted man should tell me that a sermon of mine was a corker, than for the archbishop of the archdiocese to write me a personal letter of praise."

Just then the chaplain, who was accused of having eyes in the back of his head, saw something directly behind him. No less than four of the seven McGillicuddy boys were altar boys, wearing little red cassocks and white surplices in church. They were supposed to leave the cassocks and surplices in the sacristy, but Ignatius McGillicuddy, aged ten, had sneaked out of the sacristy, still wearing his red cassock, and, seeing the chaplain passing out of the gate, thought it safe to begin an elaborate skirt dance, in his cassock, and making many fancy steps, with much high kicking, while the skirt of his cassock waved in the air. In the midst of his final pirouette, he caught the chaplain's stern glance fixed on him. Instantly Ignatius appeared to turn to stone, and the vision of a switch, wielded by Mrs. McGillicuddy's robust arm, passed before his eyes. He was immensely relieved when the chaplain said, grimly:

"Ten pages of catechism next Sunday."

Kettle went home and was very solemn all day. Not even the After-Clap's pranks could make him smile, nor were the After-Clap's orders always orders to him that day. In the late afternoon Mrs. Fortescue, seeing Kettle seated in a corner of the back hall, and evidently in an introspective mood, asked him:

"What's been the matter with you all day, Kettle?"

"I'm a-seekin', Miss Betty," Kettle replied solemnly.

"What are you seeking?" Mrs. Fortescue inquired.

"Seekin' light, Miss Betty," answered Kettle. "I'm seekin' light on my duty to my country, arter the chaplain done preached to-day."

"Glad to hear it," responded Mrs. Fortescue. "Your duty at present is to look after the baby and me."

"Gord knows I does the bes' I kin," replied Kettle, raising his eyes, full of faith and love and simplicity, to Mrs. Fortescue's. "But the chaplain, he say we orter fight for our country; maybe at this heah very minute I orter be a-settin' on a hoss, a-shootin' down the enemies of my country."

"Well, Kettle," said Mrs. Fortescue, laughing, "as you can't ride and you can't shoot, I don't think you will ever do much damage to the enemies of your country."

Mrs. Fortescue passed on, laughing. But some one else had heard Kettle. This was Sergeant Halligan, a chum of Sergeant McGillicuddy, who had stopped at the Commandant's house on an errand. Sergeant Halligan, seeing no one around in that part of the house, winked to himself, and went up to "the naygur," as he, like Sergeant McGillicuddy called Kettle.

"I say," said the sergeant, in a whisper, "you're right about the chaplain's sermon. It's the duty of every man who can carry a gun to fight for his country. I saw the chaplain looking straight at you, and he was as mad as fire. A white-livered coward stands a mighty poor chanst of salvation, is what the chaplain thinks."

"Does you mean that?" anxiously asked Kettle.

"Don't I?" responded Sergeant Halligan, confidently. "Maybe you think it's hard lines to have to drill all day and walk post all night, but it's a merry jest compared with burning in hell fire. I'd ruther drill and walk post all my life than find myself in the lake of brimstone and sulphur that's a-waitin' for cowards."

"Tain't the drill and the walkin' post as skeers me," said Kettle, "but I ain't noways fond of guns. If it wasn't for them devilish guns I'd enlist, pertickler if they'd let me stay with Miss Betty and the baby."

"Sure they would," replied the artful Halligan with a wink. "The Colonel wouldn't disoblige his lady. You'd be detailed to work around the house here, and you'd look grand in uniform."

"You think so?" said Kettle, with a delighted grin, "I always did have a kinder honin' after them yaller stripes down my legs."

"And a sabre and a sabretache," continued the Sergeant. Times were sometimes dull at Fort Blizzard, and the men in the barracks could get a good many laughs out of Kettle as a soldier.

The yellow stripes down his legs and the sabre and sabretache were dazzling to Kettle, But an objection rose on the horizon.

"How 'bout them hosses?" he asked, "I ain't never been on no hoss sence the time when I wuz a little shaver, and the Kun'l—he wasn't nothin' but a lieutenant then—wuz courtin' Miss Betty, and he pick me up and put me on a hoss he call Birdseye. Lord! It makes me feel creepy now, to tink 'bout that hoss!"

"Oh, you needn't bother about horses," answered the Sergeant, cheerfully. "The Colonel could manage that, and you can wear your uniform just the same."

"I reckon I could ride a gentle hoss," ventured Kettle.

"'Course," replied the Sergeant confidently, "I think I can manage it with the orficer in charge of mounts. I could get the milkman's hoss for you. She is twenty-three years old and as quiet as an old maid of seventy-five; she wouldn't run away or kick, not even if you was to build a fire under her."

This seemed to dispose of the great difficulty in Kettle's mind, when the Sergeant suggested that he would see the milkman that very evening, and at nine o'clock the next morning, he would go to the officer in charge of mounts, and by ten o'clock Kettle, as soon as he had finished washing up the breakfast things and had taken the After-Clap for his airing in the baby carriage, could step down to the recruiting office and enlist.

Everything looked rosy to Kettle. That night, at dinner, Kettle was radiant and informed Mrs. Fortescue, between the fish and the roast, that he had "done found his duty and was a-goin' to do it."

Mrs. Fortescue had some curiosity to know what this new duty of Kettle's was, but Kettle maintained a mysterious silence, only admitting that it would not take him away from "Miss Betty and the baby."

Next morning, however, in the cold light of day, the proposition had lost something of its charms for Kettle. The yellow stripes down his legs did not appear quite so overwhelmingly fascinating. He remembered that Sergeant McGillicuddy was afraid to ride in the buggy behind the milkman's horse. Sergeant Halligan did not give Kettle any time to repent of his decision, and promptly appeared at ten o'clock and escorted Kettle to the recruiting office. The recruiting sergeant was on hand and Sergeant Halligan explained Kettle's martial enthusiasm. Something like a wink passed between Sergeant Halligan and Gully, the recruiting sergeant, who agreed to enlist Kettle, under the name of Solomon Ezekiel Pickup, as a unit in the army of the United States.

A sudden illumination came to Kettle. "Yon c'yarn' enlist me in no white regiment," cried Kettle to Sergeant Halligan, "I'm a nigger and you have to put me in a nigger regiment."

"Oh, that's all right," responded Sergeant Halligan, airily, "we can get you in all right, and we'll be proud to have you. Won't we, Gully?"

"Certainly," replied Sergeant Gully, "we can fix that up. It's fixed up already."

The rapidity of the proceedings rather startled Kettle.

"But doan' the doctor have to thump me, and pound me, and count my teeth?" he asked. Kettle had not spent twenty years at army posts without finding out something.

"No, indeed," answered Sergeant Gully, who was a chum of Sergeant Halligan, "not with such a husky feller as you. I can thump and pound and count your teeth."

With that Gully made a physical examination of Kettle, and declared that no surgeon who ever lived would turn down such a magnificent specimen of robust manhood as Kettle.

All this was very disheartening to Kettle but seemed of great interest to Sergeant Halligan and his side partner, Sergeant Gully, and also to the orderly, who grinned sympathetically with the two sergeants.

"I say," said Sergeant Gully, "there's nothing doing here this morning and I'll just leave the orderly in charge and step in with you and introduce Private Pickup to the drill sergeant. The sergeant is a honey, but the bees don't know it."

Then, with Sergeant Halligan on one side of him and Sergeant Gully on the other, Kettle started across the plaza in the clear morning light for the great riding hall. By this time Kettle was thoroughly alarmed.

The sight of the class in riding, smart young privates, marching gaily into the drill hall, made Kettle feel very uneasy about the riding.

"How 'bout the milkman's hoss?" asked Kettle anxiously.

"The milkman's horse? The milkman's horse?" sniffed Sergeant Halligan, "D'ye think I'm an infernal fool to put such a proposition up to the orficer in charge of mounts? He'd kick me full of holes if I did."

"But I say," replied Kettle, spurred by fear, "you is a deceiver, suh—a deceiver, and I'm a'goin to tell the Kun'l on you and he'll do for you—that he will."

"Look-a-here, Solomon Ezekiel Pickup," shouted Sergeant Halligan savagely, "it's against the regulations to talk to your superior orficers so damned impudent, and I'm a going to prefer charges against you, and you can face three months in the military prison for it. And I'm a-thinkin' that Briggs, the drill sergeant, will put you on the kickingest horse in the regimental stables. Sergeant Gully here says the drill sergeant is a honey, but he's awful mistaken. I've known Briggs ever since we was rookies together, and he's a cruel man, and has caused the death of several rookies by his murderin' ways."

Just then the three came face to face with Sergeant McGillicuddy. In those days McGillicuddy's honest face was gloomy and he had not much spirit for jokes, but he laughed when Sergeant Halligan explained to him that Sergeant Gully had enlisted Kettle and had passed him both mentally and physically, and that he was then on his way to take his first lesson in riding.

Sergeant McGillicuddy went his way, laughing, for once in a blue moon, and Kettle, marching between the two sergeants, felt like a prisoner on his way to execution.

Arrived at the great drill hall, now dim and silent except for a batch of recruits, and Briggs, the drill sergeant, a trooper brought in Corporal, a handsome sorrel, and the model of a trained cavalry charger. The trooper at the same time handed the Sergeant a long whip. Corporal, the charger, understood as well as any trooper in the regiment what the crack of the whip meant, from walk, trot, to gallop. As Kettle appeared, almost dragged in by the two sergeants, a grin went around among the young recruits, ruddy-skinned and clear-eyed youngsters, well set up and worthy to wear the uniform of their country.

A whispered conversation followed among the three sergeants and although Kettle was not in uniform as the other recruits were, Sergeant Briggs, for a reason imparted to him by Sergeant Halligan, called out to Kettle:

"Here, Pickup, you get up, and you stay up, and if you don't you'll get a whack up!"

This passed for a witticism to the recruits, who made it a point to laugh at all the drill sergeant's jokes. Kettle, with much difficulty, managed to climb on Corporal's back and crouched there in a heap. Corporal turned his mild intelligent eyes toward Sergeant Briggs, as much as to say:

"What kind of a fool have I got on my back now?"

"Take the reins and let her go, Gallagher!" said the sergeant with a crack of his whip.

Corporal, seeing his duty, did it. He started off in a brisk walk around the tanbark, and in twenty seconds he heard another crack, and still another, which sent him into a hard gallop. As the horse quickened his pace, Kettle dropped the reins, and grasping Corporal around the neck, hung on desperately as the horse sped around the great ellipse. At a word from Sergeant Briggs, the horse stopped and walked sedately to the middle of the hall. Kettle slipped off and staggered to his feet.



"Good Gord A'mighty," he groaned, to Sergeant Briggs, "I k'yarn' ride that air hoss, Mr. Briggs, and I ain't a goin' to, neither. Miss Betty, she tole me the way to surve my country wuz to look after the baby and her, so I'm jes' goin' to resign from the army and go home, 'cause it's scrub day."

"You go to the orficer of the day, and report yourself under arrest," promptly replied Briggs. "His office is in the headquarters building and he'll straighten you out, I'm thinkin'."

Kettle started off cheerfully enough, but instead of going to the headquarters building he made a bee line for the C. O.'s house, where he at once took off his coat and went down on his knees to scrub the pantry. Two hours afterward, when the drill sergeant's work was done in the riding hall and he discovered that Kettle had not reported himself to the officer of the day, the sergeant walked over to the C. O.'s house and sent in a respectful request to see the commanding officer.

"Come in, Sergeant," called out Colonel Fortescue, sitting at his desk.

"Beg your pardon, sir," said the Sergeant, once inside, "but I have come to you privately, to tell you about your man, known as Kettle. He came into the riding hall this morning, and Sergeant Gully and Sergeant Halligan said he enlisted. Of course, I know, sir, they couldn't enlist him, but I'm afraid I helped 'em on with the joke. Anyhow, I made him get on a horse, and it would have broke your heart, sir, to see such riding! Then he got sassy, and I told him, just to get rid of him, to report himself under arrest, but nobody hasn't seen him since."

At that moment, the new recruit was seen passing the window, and wearing blue over-alls, in which he did scrubbing. The Colonel tapped on the window and Kettle came in by the office entrance.

"What's this, Solomon, about your being saucy to Sergeant Briggs?" asked Colonel Fortescue, sternly.

"Well, suh, I enlisted," answered Kettle, promptly, "an' I done resigned. I tole that there Briggs man so, and lef' the drill hall and come home, 'cause it was scrub day."

"Three days in the guardhouse," thundered the Colonel, in a voice terrible to Kettle.

Sergeant Briggs, touching his cap, walked out, Kettle following him. At the door stood Mrs. McGillicuddy holding in her arms the After-Clap, in all his morning freshness, his little white fur cap and coat showing off his eyes and hair, so dark, like his mother's. The After-Clap gave a spring which he meant to land him in Kettle's arms, but Kettle, bursting into tears, would not take him.

"I k'yarn' take you now, honey," cried Kettle, wiping his eyes, "I'm a goin' to the guardhouse, my lamb, for three days and maybe I never see you no mo'."

The baby seemed to think this might be true, and set up a series of loud shrieks.

"Do you mean to say as you've tried to enlist?" cried Mrs. McGillicuddy, struggling with the baby and her astonishment and indignation all at once. "The idea of you being a soldier! It beats the band, it does!"

Sergeant Briggs, without giving Kettle time to explain further, marched him off, and Mrs. McGillicuddy went to report to Mrs. Fortescue, while Sergeant McGillicuddy appeared to report to Colonel Fortescue.

"I believe, sir," said the Sergeant confidentially, "as it's a crooked business about the naygur's wantin' to enlist. Gully and Sergeant Halligan was jokin', but it's mighty risky jokin' with the regulations."

So thought Sergeant Halligan and Sergeant Gully, when confronted with the Colonel. As they were two of the best sergeants in the regiment, the Colonel satisfied himself with a stern reprimand, which was not entered against them. But having sentenced Kettle to three days in the guardhouse for insolence to Sergeant Briggs, Colonel Fortescue thought it well to let the sentence stand.

Colonel Fortescue, in spite of being the commanding officer at one of the finest cavalry posts in the world, and whose word was law, could yet be made to feel domestic displeasure. The family at once divided itself into two camps, one on the Colonel's side and one on Kettle's. Anita, of course, sided with her father, and declared he had done perfectly right about Kettle, as he did about everything. Sergeant McGillicuddy was also a faithful adherent of the Colonel's in the wordless warfare that prevailed in the commanding officer's house for the three days in which Kettle enjoyed the hospitality of the guardhouse.

"Served the naygur right for sassing a sergeant," was Sergeant McGillicuddy's view. On the other side was arrayed, of course, Mrs. Fortescue, who outwardly observed an armed neutrality, but who called the Colonel "John" during the entire three days of Kettle's imprisonment. Colonel Fortescue retaliated by calling Mrs. Fortescue "Elizabeth."

There were frequent references, in the Colonel's hearing, to "Poor Kettle," and the After-Clap was not rebuked in his insistent demand for "my Kettle, I want my Kettle! Where is my Kettle?"

At intervals, from the time he waked in the morning until Mrs. McGillicuddy put him in his crib at night, the After-Clap was screaming for Kettle, and as the baby was extremely robust, his shrieks and wails for Kettle were clearly audible to the Colonel, sitting grimly in his private office, or at luncheon, or having his tea in the drawing-room. Colonel Fortescue, however, spent most of his time during those three days at the headquarters building or the officers' club. As for Mrs. McGillicuddy, she was openly on the side of Kettle and against the Colonel, and shrewdly surmised exactly what had happened about the enlistment, and also that Sergeant McGillicuddy was implicated with the other two sergeants in the outrage. Mrs. McGillicuddy boldly propounded this theory to Mrs. Fortescue while the latter was dressing for dinner on the first evening of Kettle's incarceration. The Colonel, in the next room, going through the same process of dressing, could hear every word through the open door.

"It's Patrick McGillicuddy that had a hand in it, mum," said Mrs. McGillicuddy wrathfully. "He's been takin' rises out of the naygur, as he calls Kettle, for twenty years, and he seen Sergeant Gully and Sergeant Halligan draggin' poor Kettle along to the riding hall. I seen Kettle when he run out, and McGillicuddy was a standin' off, a-laffin' fit to kill himself, and I know that Gully and Halligan has been jokin' Kettle and makin' him believe he has enlisted in the aviation corps and will have to go flyin', and Kettle's scared stiff."

"Poor Kettle," said Mrs. Fortescue softly, clasping her pearls about her white throat. "It's been a sad day to all of us, except the Colonel. Of course, I never attempt to criticise Colonel Fortescue's professional conduct, but I do feel lost without Kettle."

"Well, mum," replied Mrs. McGillicuddy, "I haven't been a sergeant's wife for twenty years without findin' out that nobody can't say a word about the orficers, but I do think, mum, as three days in the guardhouse for poor Kettle, who was bamboozled by Tim Gully and Mike Halligan, is one of the cruelest things a commandin' orficer ever done. Not that I'm a-criticisin' the Colonel, mum—I wouldn't do such a thing for the world."

"Nor would I," replied Mrs. Fortescue meekly, and fully conscious of the Colonel's presence in the next room, shaving himself savagely, "but three days for such a little thing does seem hard."

Colonel Fortescue ground his teeth and gave himself such a jab with his razor that the blood came.

This subtle persecution of the Colonel went on, with variations, for three whole days.

On the Friday when Kettle's time was up he was released and his return was hailed with open delight by his partisans, Mrs. Fortescue, Mrs. McGillicuddy and the After-Clap, and with secret relief by the Colonel, Anita and Sergeant McGillicuddy.

Kettle, on reporting to the Colonel, said solemnly, "Kun'l, I ain't never goin' ter try an' enlist no mo', so help me Gord A'mighty. An' I ain't a'goin' to pay no more 'tention to the chaplain's sermons, 'cause 'twuz that there chaplain as fust got me in this here mess, cuss him!"

This last was under Kettle's breath, and the Colonel pretended not to hear.



CHAPTER VII

THE PLEADING EYES OF WOMEN

It was May before the winter loosened its grasp on Fort Blizzard. Once more, the fort was in touch with the outside world for a few months. The mails came regularly and there were two trains a day at the station, ten miles away. In May Anita had a birthday—her eighteenth.

"You can't call me a child any longer, daddy," she said to Colonel Fortescue, on the May morning when she was showered with birthday gifts. Nevertheless, Colonel Fortescue continued to call her a child, but a glance at her reading showed that Anita was very much grown up. She still read piles of books and pamphlets concerning the Philippines and knew all about the stinging and creeping and crawling things that made life hideous in the jungles, the horrors of fever, the merciless heat, and the treacherous Moros who stabbed the sleeping soldiers by night. No word had come from Broussard across the still and sluggish Pacific.

The chaplain did not fail to remind Anita that it was a Christian act to continue her visits to Mrs. Lawrence, who still remained weak and nerveless and ill, and Anita was ready enough to do so. Mrs. Lawrence never mentioned Broussard's name and, in fact, spoke little at any time. A mental and bodily torpor seemed to possess her, and she was never able to do more than walk feebly, supported by Mrs. McGillicuddy's strong arm, to a bench, sit there for an hour or two, and return to her own two rooms. Occasionally she asked if she should give up her quarters, but as the surgeon and the chaplain and Mrs. McGillicuddy all united in telling Colonel Fortescue that Mrs. Lawrence was really unable to move, the Colonel silently acquiesced in her occupation of the quarters, which were not needed for any one else.

Once or twice a week, Anita would go to see her, and read to her, and take the sewing or knitting out of her languid hand and do it for her. Mrs. Lawrence, who appeared to notice little that went on around her, observed that Anita's eyes always sought the photograph of Broussard on the mantel, but his name was never uttered between them, nor did Mrs. Lawrence ever ask Anita to write another letter.

On Anita's birthday, in the afternoon, she went to see Mrs. Lawrence, ostensibly to carry her some of the fruit and flowers that were so abundant at the Commanding Officer's house, where the great garden was blooming beautifully. Mrs. Lawrence accepted Anita's gifts with more animation than usual, and buried her face in the lilac blossoms. From her lap a letter dropped and Anita picked it up; it was in Broussard's handwriting, which Anita knew. A vivid blush came into Anita's face; however silent she might be about Broussard, her eyes and lips were always eloquent when anything suggested him. Mrs. Lawrence made no comment on the letter and presently Anita went away. The Colonel and Mrs. Fortescue, sitting in the drawing-room at tea, saw her pass the wide window and go into the beautiful walled garden, which was, next her violin, Anita's chief delight. It was a wonderful garden for a couple of years of growth and it had developed amazingly under Anita's hand.

Sergeant McGillicuddy was a good amateur gardener, and at that very moment, wearing a suit of blue overalls, was digging away industriously. The Sergeant had lost a good deal of his cheerfulness in those later days of winter, but the garden seemed to inspire him, as it did Anita. The girl went up to him and the two were in close conference concerning a bed of cowslips the sergeant was making. Through the open window the sunny air floated, drenched with perfume. Anita was laughing at something the Sergeant said;—they had usually been serious enough while working together in the garden.

Presently Anita came into the drawing-room, carrying in her thin, white skirt, as if it were an apron, a great mass of blossoms. Colonel Fortescue held out a letter to her.

"This was enclosed in a letter to me from Mr. Broussard," said the Colonel.



Anita, although eighteen years old that day, acted like a child. She dropped the corners of her skirt and the flowers fell to the floor. One moment she stood like a bird poised for flight, and then taking the letter, tripped out of the room and up the stairs.

Both Colonel and Mrs. Fortescue in the still May afternoon heard her turn the key in the lock of her little rose-colored room.

Mrs. Fortescue gathered up the blossoms, the Colonel with moody eyes looking down.

"Oh, the jealousy of fathers," said Mrs. Fortescue, after a minute. "You think we mothers are jealous, but it is nothing compared with the jealousy of fatherhood. I have already made up my mind to be all graciousness and kindness to Beverley's future wife, but you have already made up your mind to hate your future son-in-law, whoever he may be."

"How can a man love the man who robs him of his child? That's what actually happens," replied Colonel Fortescue.

"Then the only thing you can do," replied Mrs. Fortescue, "is to concentrate all of your love upon your wife, for then you have no other man for a rival."

Colonel Fortescue agreed to this proposition, and also that his objections to Broussard were purely fanciful and that he would contrive to pick flaws in any man to whom Anita was inclined.

"But she thinks and dreams too much about Broussard," said the Colonel. "Probably he looks upon her as a pretty child, just as Conway does."

"One can't control the thoughts and dreams of youth," replied Mrs. Fortescue, "Anita must study the lesson-book of life and love like other women."

"Did you see her face when I gave her the note?" asked Colonel Fortescue.

"You are an old goose," was all the reply Mrs. Fortescue would make to this question.

Locked in her own room, Anita read her precious note. It was very short and perfectly conventional, thanking her for writing to him for Mrs. Lawrence. Broussard knew of Lawrence being among the missing men.

"Lawrence, as you may have heard," said the letter, "was a playmate of mine in my boyhood and, although he has had hard luck, I have a deep interest in him and his wife and child."

Then came a sentence that, to Anita, contained a sweet and hidden meaning: "Although Gamechick is no longer mine, I shall always love the horse because of something that happened last Christmas at the music ride."

Anita was late for dinner that evening, and at the table, as she took her lace handkerchief from the bosom of her little blue evening gown, Broussard's note came out with the handkerchief, and fell upon the floor. Her father and mother in kindness looked away, but Kettle, with well-meant but indiscreet good will, picked the letter up, saying:

"Hi! Miss 'Nita, here's your letter you carry in your bosom."

Colonel Fortescue suddenly grew cross; this thing of having a man's daughter carrying around next her heart a letter from another man is very annoying to a father of Colonel Fortescue's type. And Anita was more tender and devoted than ever, keeping up a brave show of loyalty, although she had already surrendered the citadel.

As the winter at Fort Blizzard was like the frozen regions which the old Goths believed to be the Inferno, so the summer was like a blast from the eternal furnace. The hot winds swept over the arid plains and the sun was more vengeful than the biting cold. The energies of many drooped, and the sergeants grew short with the men. But cheerfulness prevailed at the Commandant's house. In July Beverley Fortescue, named for the fine old Virginia Colonel, Mrs. Fortescue's grandfather, was to come home, in all the glory of his twenty-one years, wearing for the first time the splendid cavalry uniform instead of the grey and gold and black of a military cadet. More than that, he was to be assigned to duty at Fort Blizzard. When Mrs. Fortescue heard this, she trembled a little; it was almost too much of joy; this last crowning gift of fate made her almost afraid. And Beverley was to see, for the first time, the After-Clap, who was so much like Beverley that the Colonel and Mrs. Fortescue could hardly persuade themselves he was their last born, and not their first born.

On the great day, Beverley came. In the soft July evening, at the threshold, stood Mrs. Fortescue, holding by the hand the After-Clap, a sturdy little chap for his two-and-a-half years. The mother was smiling and blushing like a girl. Behind her stood Kettle, his face shining as if it had been varnished, and next him was Sergeant McGillicuddy, who had taught Beverley to ride and to shoot and to skate and to box, and all the manly sports of boyhood. Mrs. McGillicuddy, ruddy and beaming, towered over the little Sergeant.

Colonel Fortescue and Anita stood on the lowest of the stone steps. Presently, a motor whirled up and Beverley stepped out, looking so handsome in his well-fitting civilian clothes, with his new straw hat, in which he felt slightly queer. The Colonel wrung his hand saying:

"Boy! Boy! How glad we are to have you once more!"

Anita covered Beverley's face with kisses, but Mrs. Fortescue stood like a queen, smiling and gracious, to receive her boy's reverence. Beverley caught her in his strong young grasp; she looked so young, so lovely, so full of radiant life, that she seemed like an older Anita. Then Mrs. Fortescue raised the After-Clap and put him in Beverley's arms. Accustomed to much adulation, the After-Clap was, in general, coolly supercilious to strangers, but he seemed much pleased with Beverley's appearance, and called him "Bruvver," as he had called Broussard, who had been long since forgotten by the After-Clap.

"What a jolly little rascal!" cried Beverley, whose experience with small children was nil.

The After-Clap returned the compliment, by rapturously hugging Beverley. In fact, they became such chums on the spot that much difficulty was experienced in persuading the After-Clap to go to bed when Mrs. McGillicuddy was ready for him.

There was a joyous dinner. Beverley, like Colonel Fortescue, was surprised to find that Anita was grown up, like other girls of eighteen. Also, that his father was almost as young and handsome as his mother.

"I say, Colonel," said Beverley, "you're the handsomest Colonel in the army."

The Colonel smiled.

"For your age, that is."

The Colonel scowled.

"Your father's touchy about his age," Mrs. Fortescue explained, "and so am I, so please, Beverley, keep away from the unpleasant subject."

Beverley Fortescue had three months' leave before taking up his duties as an officer at the post and it was a halcyon time at the Commandant's house. In spite of the torrid heat, there were parties of pleasure and little dances, and all the round of gaieties that prevail at army posts. The Colonel was proud of his well-set-up stripling, although, of course, a boy could never be of so much value in a family as a girl, according to Colonel Fortescue's philosophy. With Mrs. Fortescue it was the other way. Dear as was Anita to her, the mother's heart was triumphant over her soldier son. As for the After-Clap, he frankly repudiated his whole domestic circle, except Kettle, for Beverley, who was as tall and strong as his father and could do many more things amusing to a two-and-half-year-old than a stern and dignified Colonel. Anita and Beverley were as intimate and passionately fond of each other as when they were little playmates. Beverley asked some questions of his mother concerning Anita.

"All the fellows like to dance with her and ride with her, but she treats them all as she does old Conway."

"Old Conway," Colonel Fortescue's aide, was barely turned thirty; but to the twenty-one-year-old Beverley, Conway seemed an aged veteran.

"I can't understand it," plaintively responded Mrs. Fortescue. "Sometimes I think Anita has no coquetry in her. Again I think she is the worst type of coquette—she treats all men alike. You remember my writing you about Anita being thrown at the music ride last Christmas Eve, and Broussard jumping his horse over her?"

"I should think so," answered Beverley. "I wish you could have seen the letter the Colonel wrote me about it. I felt more sorry for what the poor old chap must have suffered than for you, mother."

"Don't call your father 'the poor old chap,'" said Mrs. Fortescue positively. "And don't make jokes about the After-Clap being the child of his old age. Your father doesn't like it. It's perfectly disgusting the way young people now speak of their elders, who are barely middle-aged, as if they were centenarians. Well, I think, and your father thinks, that Anita had a fancy for Broussard. He was a very attractive man. Your father thought him a prodigal with his money, but, of course, some fault must be found with every man who looks at Anita."



"But Anita is so young—a chit, a child."

"She is not quite three years younger than you," replied Mrs. Fortescue. "This notion that Anita is a child and must be treated as such is ridiculous. Why, when I was Anita's age, I had had a dozen love affairs."

"Did no one ever tell you, mother, that you are a born coquette, and you will be coquettish at ninety, if you live to bless us so long?"

Mrs. Fortescue laughed the soft, musical laugh that was a part of her armory of charms, and made no reply.

At dinner that night Beverley suddenly began to ask questions about Broussard, praising his horsemanship, but wanting to know what kind of a fellow he was. The Colonel spoke guardedly and damned Broussard with faint praise, as he would any man whom he thought likely to rob him of his one ewe lamb; yet the Colonel thought himself a just man.

The eloquent blood leaped into Anita's cheeks, and there was something like resentment in her eyes at the Colonel's cool commendation. After dinner she took Beverley into the garden, and the brother and sister walked up and down in the moonlight, and Anita, thinking she was keeping her secret, revealed everything to Beverley. Broussard was the finest young officer, the most beautiful horseman, he could sing Koerner's Battle Hymn as no one else could, and when she played a violin obligato to his songs of love——

Anita stopped short, and turned her long-lashed eyes full on Beverley.

"Daddy doesn't do justice to Mr. Broussard," she said, "but you ought to have seen the way he grasped Mr. Broussard's hands after the music ride."

Colonel and Mrs. Fortescue, sitting in the cool, dim drawing-room, heard Beverley's laughter floating in from the garden. Beverley saw the case at a glance.

The torrid summer slipped by, and in November it was winter again, and the earth was snowbound once more. In all those months Mrs. Lawrence remained, feeble and nerveless, in the two little rooms she was still permitted to occupy. By that time she was a shadow. Mrs. McGillicuddy was more kind than ever to her, and Sergeant McGillicuddy grew more sombre every day, thinking that his words had brought Lawrence to ruin and his unfortunate wife close to the boundaries of the far country. The chaplain took the Sergeant in hand, and so did the Colonel, but the Sergeant, who had a tender heart under his well-fitting uniform, was not a happy man. Anita went regularly to see Mrs. Lawrence, and as the young are appalled at the thought of life going out, she watched with palpitating fear what seemed a steady journey toward the land where spirits dwell. But always on those visits to the woman who seemed slipping from life into the great ocean of forgetfulness, there was a thrill of joy for Anita; she could see Broussard's picture. Young and imaginative souls live and thrive on very little.