nd only
occasional holidays with her. Every few months he came to visit them,
or had her run down to New York for a brief tour among the shops, the
theatres, and the picture-galleries. She was enthusiastically devoted
to him, and thought no man on earth so grand, so handsome, so
accomplished. She believed herself the most enviable of daughters as
the child of so fond and indulgent a father. She gloried in the pride
which he manifested in her success at school, in her budding beauty and
graceful ways. She welcomed his coming with infinite delight, and was
ever ready to drop any other project when papa's brief letters and
telegrams summoned her to the city. Whatever their feeling toward the
doctor, her grand-parents had never betrayed them to her or sought to
undermine--or rather undeceive--her loyal devotion; but never had it
occurred to them as a possibility that he would assert his paternal
claim and bear away with him the idol of their hearts, the image of the
cherished daughter he had won from them so many years before. Proud old
judge and senator as he was, the grandfather had never been so sore
stricken. He could not plead, could not humble himself to unbend and
ask for mercy. For good and sufficient cause he had denied his
son-in-law the boon that had been so confidently demanded, and in his
chagrin and exasperation Dr. Bayard had taken his revenge. It was too
late now to prepare their little Elinor for characteristics of which
she had never dreamed, too late to warn her that her superb father was
not the hero her fancy painted. In utter consternation, in wretchedness
of spirit, the old couple saw her borne away, tearful at leaving them,
yet blissful at being with papa, and going once more to the army, and
they could only pray heaven to guard her and to comfort them.

But, if Dr. Bayard was incensed at being ordered to so distant a
station as Laramie, in the first place, his discontent was greatly
augmented with the coming of the new year. It was a crowded post when
he and Elinor arrived in the early winter, but long before the snows
had begun to disappear all the cavalry, and all but two companies of
infantry there on duty, were ordered northward into the Sioux country,
and his assistant was taken with the field column, leaving to the older
man the unwelcome task of caring for the families of all the absentees
as well as for the few men in the hospital. The sight of Dr. Bayard,
dignified, handsome, elegant in dre