nd in camp, then you may ride where you please."

Maynard swept his eyes over the village. "It is done! Now, Miss Curtis,
let's try for the top of that hill?"

"No, no, you have been riding all night."

"Why, so I have! In the charm of your presence I'd forgotten it. I'm
supposed to be fagged."

"You don't look it," remarked Curtis, humorously, running his eyes over
the burly figure before him. "At the same time, I think you'd better
return. Your commissariat wagons will be rumbling in soon."

Maynard again saluted. "Very well, 'Major,' it shall be so," and,
wheeling his horse in such wise as to turn Jennie's pony, they galloped
off together, leaving Curtis and Elsie to follow.

"It's hard to realize that disaster came so near to us," he said,
musingly, and Elsie shaded her eyes with her hand and looked up at the
hills.

"There is a wonderful charm in this dry country! I have never seen such
blinding sunshine. But life must be difficult here."

"You begin to feel that? I expect to stay here at least five years,
providing I am not removed."

She shuddered perceptibly. "Five years is a long time to give out of
one's life--with so little to show for it."

He hesitated a moment, then said, with deep feeling, "It's hard, it's
lonely, but, after all, it has its compensations. I can see results. The
worst side of it all is--I can never ask any woman to share such a life
with me. I feel guilty when I consider Jennie--she ought to have a home
of her own; she has no outlook here."

She looked straight ahead as she replied. "You would find life here
intolerable without her."

"I know it; but in my best moments I realize how selfish it is in me to
keep her."

"Suppose you were to resign, what would you do?"

"I would try to secure a chance at some field-work for the Ethnologic
Bureau. It doesn't pay very well, but it would be congenial, and my
proficiency in the sign language would, I think, make me valuable. I
have determined never to go back to garrison life without some special
duty to occupy my mind."

"Life isn't a bit simple when you are grown up, is it?"

"Life is always simple, if one does one's duty."

"That is a soldier's answer; it is not easy for me to enter into that
spirit. I have my art, and no sense of duty at all."

"Your position is equally strange to me; but duties will discover
themselves--later. A life without duties is impossible."

"I know what you mean, but I do not intend to allow an