n't it be before I leave--tonight, within the hour?"

"Oh, father!" said Frances, in terrified voice, lifting her face in
its tear-wet loveliness.

"I must make the train that leaves Meander at four o'clock tomorrow
morning, I shall have to leave here within--" he flashed out his watch
with his quick, nervous hand--"within three-quarters of an hour. What
do you say, Major King? Are you ready?"

"I have been ready at any time for two years," Major King replied, in
trembling eagerness.

Frances was thrown into such a mental turmoil by the sudden proposal
that she could not, at that moment, speak a further protest. She stood
with white face, her heart seeming to shrivel, and fall away to
laboring faintness. Colonel Landcraft was not considering her. He was
thinking that he must have three hours' sleep in the hotel at Meander
before the train left for Omaha.

"Then we shall have the wedding at once, just as you stand!" he
declared. "We'll have the chaplain in and--go and tell your mother,
child, and--oh, well, throw on another dress if you like."

Frances found her tongue as her danger of being married off in that
hot and hasty manner grew imminent.

"I'm not going to marry Major King, father, now or at any future
time," said she, speaking slowly, her words coming with coldness from
her lips.

"Silence! you have nothing to say, nothing to do but obey!" Colonel
Landcraft blazed up in sudden explosion, after his manner, and set his
heel down hard on the floor, making his sword clank in its scabbard on
his thigh.

"I have not had much to say," Frances admitted, bitterly, "but I am
going to have a great deal to say in this matter now. Both of you have
gone ahead about this thing just as if I was irresponsible, both of
you--"

"Hold your tongue, miss! I command you--hold your tongue!"

"It's the farthest thing from my heart to give you pain, or disappoint
you in your calculations of me, father," she told him, her voice
gathering power, her words speed, for she was a warrior like himself,
only that her balance was not so easily overthrown; "but I am not
going to marry Major King."

"Heaven and hell!" said Colonel Landcraft, stamping up and down.

"Heaven _or_ hell," said she, "and not hell--if I can escape it."

"I'll not permit this insubordination in a member of my family!"
roared the colonel, his face fiery, his rumpled eyebrows knitted in a
scowl. "I'll have obedience, with good grace, and at once, or damn m