sed, and muffled in her long fur-lined
cloak, Miss Loomis was at the gate. "Why! Mr. Davies!" she exclaimed in
surprise.

"I was just wondering whether I might venture to ring and ask for the
captain," he hesitatingly said. "I wanted very much to see him."

"Captain Cranston is out. That is how it happens that _I_ am going out,"
she spoke, with prompt and cheery tone. "Old Sergeant Fritz is very low
to-night, and you'll find the captain there," and she indicated the way
to the married men's quarters over to the southwest. "I have to run over
to the hospital, for Louis's cough is very troublesome, and we happened
to be entirely out of medicine."

"Well, my talk with the captain can wait, Miss Loomis. Let me be your
orderly for to-night. What can I get for you?"

"Indeed you shall not!" she answered, with quick decision. "I'm
accustomed to doing my own errands. Good-night." And with that she
turned independently away to where the dim lights in the hospital
glimmered at the eastward.

"Then your ex-patient may at least trot along as escort," said he, as
promptly placing himself by her side and, army fashion, tendering his
arm.

"No, thank you," she answered, resolutely muffling her cloak about her
and rebelling against the rising impulse of vexation, "I do not need
support, and indeed, Mr. Davies, I need no escort. I'm quite accustomed
to going about the post by myself. I--I would very much rather you went
on to see Captain Cranston, as was your intention."

"And I would very much rather walk with you to the hospital," he
answered, with calm decision. "Come."

She had stopped as though striving to dismiss him from her side, but he
ignored her wishes entirely. His lips were curving into something very
like a smile of amusement, and it nettled her.

"To be perfectly frank with you, Mr. Davies, I wish now that I had made
a reconnoissance before venturing out so boldly. If there is anything I
hate it is this idea of burdening a man with escort duty. Just as though
one needed to be guarded at every step. It is the dependence of the
thing I despise,--a dependence that is entirely forced upon us."

"Well, so long as the escort is not forced upon you, I hope you will
not despise it. I am going with you because, as it's after taps, you may
need help in rousing the steward. He was up all last night, I'm told,
with Fritz, and may be abed now."

And so her protests, not her scruples, were silenced. Down the row they
rapi