unwelcome responsibility upon him.

"Where is Lieutenant Beverley?" she demanded, now close to Clark, face
to face, and gazing straight into his eyes. "I want to see him." Her
tone suggested intensest excitement. She was trembling visibly.

Clark's face changed its expression. He suddenly recalled to mind
Alice's rapturous public greeting of Beverley on the day of the
surrender. He was a cavalier, and it did not agree with his sense of
high propriety for girls to kiss their lovers out in the open air
before a gazing army. True enough, he himself had been hoodwinked by
Alice's beauty and boldness in the matter of Long-Hair. He confessed
this to himself mentally, which may have strengthened his present
disapproval of her personal inquiry about Beverley. At all events he
thought she ought not to be coming into the stockade on such an errand.

"Lieutenant Beverley is absent acting under my orders he said, with
perfect respectfulness, yet in a tone suggesting military finality. He
meant to set an indefinite yet effective rebuke in his words.

"Absent?" she echoed. "Gone? You sent him away to be killed! You had no
right--you--"

"Miss Roussillon," said Clark, becoming almost stern, "you had better
go home and stay there; young girls oughtn't to run around hunting men
in places like this."

His blunt severity of speech was accompanied by a slight frown and a
gesture of impatience.

Alice's face blazed red to the roots of her sunny hair; the color
ebbed, giving place to a pallor like death. She began to tremble, and
her lips quivered pitifully, but she braced herself and tried to force
back the choking sensation in her throat.

"You must not misconstrue my words," Clark quickly added; "I simply
mean that men will not rightly understand you. They will form
impressions very harmful to you. Even Lieutenant Beverley might not see
you in the right light."

"What--what do you mean?" she gasped, shrinking from him, a burning
spot reappearing under the dimpled skin of each cheek.

"Pray, Miss, do not get excited. There is nothing to make you cry." He
saw tears shining in her eyes. "Beverley is not in the slightest
danger. All will be well, and he'll come back in a few days. The
expedition will be but a pleasure trip. Now you go home. Lieutenant
Beverley is amply able to take care of himself. And let me tell you, if
you expect a good man to have great confidence in you, stay home and
let him hunt you up instead of you hunti