d quickly and noiselessly let himself out of
the open door, swung lightly to the ground, and was out of sight among
the trees.

"Why, what a strange proceeding!" said Aunt Grace again. "We are fully a
mile and a half from the hotel, and he means to walk it in this glaring
sun."

Evidently he did. The driver reined up at the moment in response to a
suggestion from some one in a forward seat, and there suddenly appeared
by the wayside, striding out from the shelter of the sumachs, the
athletic figure of the stranger.

"Go ahead!" he called, in a deep chest-voice that had an unmistakable
ring to it,--the tone that one so readily recognizes in men accustomed
to prompt action and command. "I'm going across lots." And, swinging his
heavy stick, with quick, elastic steps and erect carriage the man in
gray plunged into a wood-path and was gone.

"Alice," said Aunt Grace, again, "that man is an officer, I'm sure, and
you have driven him into exile and lonely wandering. I've seen so much
of them when visiting my brother in the old days before my marriage that
even in civilian dress it is easy to tell some of them. Just look at
that back, and those shoulders! He has been a soldier all his life.
Horrors! suppose it should be Captain Armitage himself!"

Miss Renwick looked genuinely distressed, as well as vexed. Certainly no
officer but Captain Armitage would have had reason to leave the stage.
Certainly officers and their families occasionally visited Sablon in the
summer-time, but Captain Armitage could hardly be here. There was
comforting assurance in the very note she held in her hand.

"It cannot be," she said, "because Mr. Jerrold writes that they have
just heard from him at Sibley. He is still at the sea-shore, and will
not return for a month. Mr. Jerrold says he implored Captain Chester to
let him have three days' leave to come down here and have a sail and a
picnic with us, and was told that it would be out of the question."

"Did he tell you any other news?" asked Mrs. Maynard, looking up from
her letter again,--"anything about the german?"

"He says he thinks it a shame we are to be away and--well, read it
yourself." And she placed it in her mother's hands, the dark eyes
seriously, anxiously studying her face as she read. Presently Mrs.
Maynard laid it down and looked again into her own, then, pointing to a
certain passage with her finger, handed it to her daughter.

"Men were deceivers ever," she said, laughing