has to go. Mrs. Wilton is on the veranda, urging them to
come in out of the chill night air. Those papers on his desk must be
completed and filed this very night. He told her this.

"To-morrow, early, I will be here," he murmurs. "And now, good-night, my
own."

But she does not seek to draw her hand away. Slowly he moves back into
the bright moonbeams and she follows part way. One quick glance she
gives as her hand is released and he raises his forage cap. It is _such_
a disadvantage to have but one arm at such a time! She sees that Mrs.
Wilton is at the other end of the veranda.

"Good-night," she whispers. "I--know you _must_ go."

"I must. There is so much to be done."

"I--thought"--another quick glance at the piazza--"that a soldier, on
leaving, should--salute his commanding officer?"

And Romney Lee is again in shadow and--in sunshine.

* * * * *

Late that autumn, in one of his infrequent letters to his devoted
mother, Mr. McKay finds time to allude to the news of Lieutenant Lee's
approaching marriage to Miss Stanley.

"Phil is, of course, immensely pleased," he writes, "and from all I hear
I suppose Mr. Lee is a very different fellow from what we thought six
months ago. Pennock says I always had a wrong idea of him; but Pennock
thinks all my ideas about the officers appointed over me are absurd. He
likes old Pelican, our battery commander, who is just the crankiest,
crabbedest, sore-headedest captain in all the artillery, and that is
saying a good deal. I wish I'd got into the cavalry at the start; but
there's no use in trying now. The --th is the only regiment I wanted;
but they have to go to reveille and stables before breakfast, which
wouldn't suit me at all.

"Hope Nan's better. A winter in the Riviera will set her up again.
Stanley asks after her when he writes, but he has rather dropped me of
late. I suppose it's because I was too busy to answer, though he ought
to know that in New York harbor a fellow has no time for scribbling,
whereas, out on the plains they have nothing else to do. He sent me his
picture a while ago, and I tell you he has improved wonderfully. Such a
swell moustache! I meant to have sent it over for you and Nan to see,
but I've mislaid it somewhere."

Poor little Nan! She would give many of her treasures for one peep at
the coveted picture that Will holds so lightly. There had been temporary
improvement in her health at the time Uncle Jack came with