, his thoughts wandered
far afield--always at last to Josiah's pansy, the many-masked Leila, and
behind her pretty feminine disguises the serious-minded woman for whom,
as he smilingly consulted his fancy, he found no flower emblem to suit
him. The letter he read once more represented many Leilas. Could he
answer all of them and abide too by the silence he meant to preserve
until the war was over? The imp of mischief was at his side. There was no
kind of personal word of herself in the letter, except that he was
ordered to talk of John Penhallow and his adventures. He wrote far into
the Christmas night:

"DEAR LEILA: To hear is to obey. I am to write of myself--of adventures.
Nearness to death in the trenches is an every-second-day adventure
enough--no one talks of it. Tom was ill-advised to report of me at home.
I used to dream of the romance of war when I was a boy. There is very
little romance in it, and much dirt, awful horrors of the dead and
wounded, of battles lost or won, and waste beyond conception. After a big
fight or wearying march one could collect material for a rummage-sale
such as would rout Aunt Ann's ideal of an amusing auction of useless
things.

"My love to one and all, and above all to the dear Colonel who is never
long out of my mind.

"Yours truly,

"JOHN PENHALLOW."

"I put on this separate sheet for you alone the adventure you ask for. It
is the only one worth telling, and came to me this Christmas morning. It
was strange enough.

"An old Colonel caught me as I was about to visit Tom McGregor at the
hospital. I was disgusted, but he wanted an engineer. He got me, alas! We
rode far to our left over icy snow-crust. To cut my tale short, after we
passed our outlying pickets and I had answered a dozen questions, he
said, 'Can you see their pickets?' I said, 'No, they are half a mile away
on the far side of a creek in the woods. That road leads to a bridge;
they may be behind the creek.'

"'Do you think it fordable?'

"'I do not know.' Like a fool, I said, 'I will ride down the road and get
a nearer look.' He would be much obliged. I rode Hoodoo down an icy hill
with a sharp lookout for their pickets. As I rode, I slipped my revolver
out and let it hang at my wrist. I rode on cautiously. About a quarter of
a mile from the creek I made up my mind that I had gone far enough. The
creek was frozen, as I might have known, and the colonel too. As I
checked Hoodoo a shot rang out from a clump of