rounds on which to excuse
it; but he seems to understand that something is impending, and is
looking nervous and harassed. He has not renewed his request for leave
of absence to run down to Sablon. I told him curtly it was out of the
question."

The colonel took a few strides up and down the room. It had come, then.
The good name of those he loved was already besmirched by garrison
gossip, and he knew that nothing but heroic measures could ever silence
scandal. Impulse and the innate sense of "fight" urged him to go at once
to the scene, leaving his wife and her fair daughter here under his
sister's roof; but Armitage and common sense said no. He had placed his
burden on those broad gray shoulders, and, though ill content to wait,
he felt that he was bound. Stowing away the letters, too nervous to
sleep, too worried to talk, he stole from the cottage, and, with hands
clasped behind his back, with low-bowed head he strolled forth into the
broad vista of moonlit road.

There were bright lights still burning at the hotel, and gay voices came
floating through the summer air. The piano, too, was thrumming a waltz
in the parlor, and two or three couples were throwing embracing,
slowly-twirling shadows on the windows. Over in the bar-and
billiard-rooms the click of the balls and the refreshing rattle of
cracked ice told suggestively of the occupation of the inmates. Keeping
on beyond these distracting sounds, he slowly climbed a long, gradual
ascent to the "bench," or plateau above the wooded point on which were
grouped the glistening white buildings of the pretty summer resort, and,
having reached the crest, turned silently to gaze at the beauty of the
scene,--at the broad, flawless bosom of a summer lake all sheen and
silver from the unclouded moon. Far to the southeast it wound among the
bold and rock-ribbed bluffs rising from the forest growth at their base
to shorn and rounded summits. Miles away to the southward twinkled the
lights of one busy little town; others gleamed and sparkled over towards
the northern shore, close under the pole-star; while directly opposite
frowned a massive wall of palisaded rock, that threw, deep and heavy and
far from shore, its long reflection in the mirror of water. There was
not a breath of air stirring in the heavens, not a ripple on the face of
the waters beneath, save where, close under the bold headland down on
the other side, the signal-lights, white and crimson and green, creeping