ilitary command, while a pair of gray eyes met his with
a flash. The cabin room was ill lighted; but the crepuscular dimness
did not seem to hinder his sight. Beyond the girl's figure, a pair of
slender swords hung crossed aslant on the wall opposite the low door.

Beverley had seen, in the old world galleries, pictures in which the
shadowy and somewhat uncertain background thus forced into strongest
projection the main figure, yet without clearly defining it. The rough
frame of the doorway gave just the rustic setting suited to Alice's
costume, the most striking part of which was a grayish short gown
ending just above her fringed buckskin moccasins. Around her head she
had bound a blue kerchief, a wide corner of which lay over her crown
like a loose cap. Her bright hair hung free upon her shoulders in
tumbled half curls. As a picture, the figure and its entourage might
have been artistically effective; but as Beverley saw it in actual life
the first impression was rather embarrassing. Somehow he felt almost
irresistibly invited to laugh, though he had never been much given to
risibility. The blending, or rather the juxtaposition, of extremes--a
face, a form immediately witching, and a costume odd to
grotesquery--had made an assault upon his comprehension at once so
sudden and so direct that his dignity came near being disastrously
broken up. A splendidly beautiful child comically clad would have made
much the same half delightful, half displeasing impression.

Beverley could not stare at the girl, and no sooner had he turned his
back upon her than the picture in his mind changed like a scene in a
kaleidoscope. He now saw a tall, finely developed figure and a face
delicately oval, with a low, wide forehead, arched brows, a straight,
slightly tip-tilted nose, a mouth sweet and full, dimpled cheeks, and a
strong chin set above a faultless throat. His imagination, in casting
off its first impression, was inclined to exaggerate Alice's beauty and
to dwell upon its picturesqueness. He smiled as he walked back to the
fort, and even found himself whistling gayly a snatch from a rollicking
fiddle-tune that he had heard when a boy.

CHAPTER VI

A FENCING BOUT

A few days after Helm's arrival, M. Roussillon returned to Vincennes,
and if he was sorely touched in his amour propre by seeing his suddenly
acquired military rank and title drop away, he did not let it be known
to his fellow citizens. He promptly called upon