iss Stanley. She
had even blushingly shaken hands with big Lieutenant Lee, whose kind
brown eyes were full of fun and playfulness whenever he greeted her. But
it was noticed that something, all of a sudden, had occurred to mar the
growing intimacy; then that the once blithe little lady was looking
white and sorrowful; that she avoided Miss Stanley for two whole days,
and that her blue eyes watched wistfully for some one who did not
come,--"Mr. Stanley, no doubt," was the diagnosis of the case by "Miss
Mischief" and others.

Then, like a thunder-clap, came the order for Phil Stanley's arrest, and
then there were other sad faces. Miriam Stanley's dark eyes were not
only troubled, but down in their depths was a gleam of suppressed
indignation that people knew not how to explain. Colonel Stanley, to
whom every one had been drawn from the first, now appeared very stern
and grave; the joy had vanished from his face. Mrs. McKay was flitting
about the parlors tearfully thankful that "it wasn't her boy." Nannie
had grown whiter still, and very "absent" and silent. Mr. Lee did not
come at all.

Then there was startling news! An outbreak, long smouldering, had just
occurred at the great reservation of the Spirit Wolf; the agent and
several of his men had been massacred, their women carried away into a
captivity whose horrors beggar all description, and two troops--hardly
sixscore men--of Colonel Stanley's regiment were already in pursuit.
Leaving his daughter to the care of an old friend at Craney's, and after
a brief interview with his boy at barracks, the old soldier who had come
eastward with such glad anticipation turned promptly back to the field
of duty. He had taken the first train and was already beyond the
Missouri. Almost immediately after the colonel's departure, Mr. Lee had
come to the hotel and was seen to have a brief but earnest talk with
Miss Stanley on the north piazza,--a talk from which she had gone
direct to her room and did not reappear for hours, while he, who
usually had a genial, kindly word for every one, had turned abruptly
down the north steps as though to avoid the crowded halls and piazzas,
and so returned to the barracks.

But now, this lovely June morning the news from the far West is still
more direful. Hundreds of savages have taken the war-path, and murder is
the burden of every tale from around their reservation, but--this is the
day of "last parade" and the graduating ball, and people cannot