pe of the rampart into the
parade and over to the cook's quarters neighboring the kitchen. She
nosed gleefully about among pots and kettles, feeling very much at home
and civilized to the verge of luxury; she pried stealthily, every inch a
cat, into the arrangements for to-morrow's breakfast, with a noiseless
step and a breathless purr, until suddenly a tin pan containing beans
was tumultuously overturned, being within the line of an active spring.
For the _douce fillette_ had caught a mouse, which few sweet little
girls are capable of doing;--a regular domestic fireside mouse, a thing
which the _douce fillette_ had not seen in many weeks.

The stir in the neighboring cabin did not affright Kitty, and when the
officers' cook, a veritable African negro, suddenly appeared with an
ebony face and the rolling whites of astonished eyes, she exhibited her
capture and was rewarded by a word of commendation which she quite
understood, although it was as outlandish as the gutturals of
Willinawaugh.

When the night was nearly spent, a great star, splendidly blazing in the
sorceries of a roseate haze, seemed to conjure into the blackness a cold
glimmer of gray light above the high, bleak, serrated summit line of
the mountains of the eastern horizon, showing here and there white blank
intervals, that presently were revealed as stark snowy domes rising into
the wintry silence of a new day. The resonant bugle suddenly sounded the
reveille along the far winding curves of the river, rousing greetings of
morning from many a mountain crag, and before the responsive echoes of
the forest were once more mute the parade was full of the commotion
elicited by the beating of the drums; shadowy military figures were
falling in line, and the brisk authoritative ringing voice of the first
sergeant was calling the roll in each company.

And on the doorstep of Odalie's cabin, when Josephine opened the door,
sat the _douce mignonne_ with her most babified expression on her face,
now and again mewing noiselessly, going through the motions of grief,
and cuddling down in infantile style when with wild babbling cries of
endearment the little girl swooped up maternally the renegade cat.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote C: Friendship! Friendship!]

CHAPTER IV

With the earliest flush of dawn Hamish MacLeod was seeking one of the
officers in order to solicit a guide to enable him to go in search of
his brother with some chance of success.

Captain St