d him and kissed his drawn little face.

"You dear, good Jean!" she murmured, "you did not forget me."

"I brought you something," he whispered, producing the book.

Alice snatched it, looked at it, and then at Jean.

"Why, what did you bring this for? you silly Jean! I didn't want this.
I don't like this book at all. It's hateful. I despise it. Take it
back."

"There's something in it for you, a paper with writing on it;
Lieutenant Beverley wrote it on there. It's shut up between the leaves
about the middle."

"Sh-s-sh! not so loud, the guard'll hear you," Alice breathlessly
whispered, her whole manner changing instantly. She was trembling, and
the color had been whisked from her face, as the flame from a candle in
a sudden draught.

She found the note and read it a dozen times without a pause, her eyes
leaping along the lines back and forth with pathetic eagerness and
concentration. Presently she sat down on the bench and covered her face
with her hands. A tremor first, then a convulsive sobbing, shook her
collapsed form. Jean regarded her with a drolly sympathetic grimace,
elevating his long chin and letting his head settle back between his
shoulders.

"Oh, Jean, Jean!" she cried at last, looking up and reaching out her
arms; "O Jean, he is gone, gone, gone!"

Jean stepped closer to her while she sobbed again like a little child.

She pulled him to her and held him tightly against her breast while she
once more read the note through blinding tears. The words were few, but
to her they bore the message of desolation and despair. A great,
haunting, hollow voice in her heart repeated them until they echoed
from vague distance to distance.

It was written with a bit of lead on the half of a mildewed fly-leaf
torn from the book:

"Dear Alice:

"I am going away. When you read this, think of me as hurrying through
the wilderness to reach our army and bring it here. Be brave, as you
always have been; be good, as you cannot help being; wait and watch for
me; love me, as I love you. I will come. Do not doubt it, I will come,
and I will crush Hamilton and his command. Courage, Alice dear;
courage, and wait for me.

"Faithfully ever,
"Beverley."

She kissed the paper with passionate fervor, pouring her tears upon it
in April showers between which the light of her eyes played almost
fiercely, so poignant was her sense of a despair which bordered upon
desperation. "Gone, gone!" It was all she could think