re many things I wished to hear,--many questions that I
asked,--and I learned how Sam had galloped on until he reached the fort,
how he had given the alarm, how Colonel Washington himself had ridden
forth twenty minutes later at the head of fifty men,--all who could be
spared,--and had spurred on through the night, losing the road more than
once and searching for it with hearts trembling with fear lest they
should be too late, and how they had not been too late, but had saved
us,--saved Dorothy.

"And I think you are dearer to the commander's heart than any other man,"
she added. "Indeed, he told me so. For he stayed here with you for three
days, watching at your bedside, until he found that he could stay no
longer, and then he tore himself away as a father leaves his child. I had
never seen him moved so deeply, for you know he rarely shows emotion."

Ah, Dorothy, you did not know him as did I! You had not been with him at
Great Meadows, nor beside the Monongahela, nor when we buried Braddock
there in the road in the early morning. You had not been with him at
Winchester when wives cried to him for their husbands, and children for
their parents, nor beside the desolated hearths of a hundred frontier
families. And of a sudden it came over me as a wave rolls up the beach,
how much of sorrow and how little of joy had been this man's portion.
Small wonder that his face seemed always sad and that he rarely smiled.

Dorothy had left me alone a moment with my thoughts, and when she came
back, she brought her mother with her. I had never seen her look at me
as she looked now, and for the first time perceived that it was from her
Dorothy got her eyes. She stood in the doorway for a moment, gazing down
at me, and then, before I knew what she was doing, had fallen on her
knees beside my bed and was kissing my bandaged hand.

"Why, aunt!" I cried, and would have drawn it from her.

"Oh, Tom," she sobbed, and clung to it, "can you forgive me?"

"Forgive you, aunt?" I cried again, yet more amazed. "What have you done
that you should stand in need of my forgiveness?"

"What have I done?" she asked, and raised her face to mine. "What have I
not done, rather? I have been a cold, hard woman, Tom. I have forgot what
right and justice and honor were. But I shall forget no longer. Do you
know what I have here in my breast?" she cried, and she snatched forth a
paper and held it before my eyes. "You could never guess. It is a letter
you