d not
mean it."

She stood facing him, trying to look right into his eyes. A quality in
his voice had checked her hot anger. She could only see his dim
outlines in the dull gleam from the fort's lantern. He seemed to be
forlornly wretched.

"I should like to believe you," she presently said, "but I cannot. You
English are all, all despicable, mean, vile!"

She was remembering the young officer who had assaulted her with his
sword in the house a while ago. And (what a strange thing the human
brain is!) she at the same time comforted herself with the further
thought that Beverley would never, never, be guilty of rudeness to a
woman.

"Some time you shall not say that," Farnsworth responded. "I asked you
to stop a moment that I might beg you to believe how wretchedly sorry I
am for what I am doing. But you cannot understand me now. Are you
really hurt, Miss Roussillon? I assure you that it was purely
accidental."

"My hurt is nothing," she said.

"I am very glad."

"Well, then, shall we go on to the fort?"

"You may go where you please, Mademoiselle."

She turned her back upon him and without an answering word walked
straight to the lantern that hung by the gate of the stockade, where a
sentinel tramped to and fro. A few moments later Captain Farnsworth
presented her to Hamilton, who had been called from his bed when the
news of the trouble at Roussillon place reached the fort.

"So you've been raising hell again, have you, Miss?" he growled, with
an ugly frown darkening his face.

"I beg your pardon," said Farnsworth, "Miss Roussillon was not to blame
for--"

"In your eyes she'd not be to blame, sir, if she burned up the fort and
all of us in it," Hamilton gruffly interrupted. "Miss, what have you
been doing? What are you here for? Captain Farnsworth, you will please
state the particulars of the trouble that I have just heard about. And
I may as well notify you that I wish to hear no special lover's
pleading in this girl's behalf."

Farnsworth's face whitened with anger; he bit his lip and a shiver ran
through his frame; but he had to conquer the passion. In a few words,
blunt and direct as musket-balls, he told all the circumstances of what
had taken place, making no concealments to favor Alice, but boldly
blaming the officer of the patrol, Lieutenant Barlow, for losing his
head and attacking a young girl in her own home.

"I will hear from Barlow," said Hamilton, after listening attentively
to the s