with him. They spoke few words together on the way, and parted
on the corridor, near her door, for there Davies turned and faced his
friend.

"And you must go back to Scott to-night, sir?"

"Yes." The chaplain was still grasping his hand and looking into the
sad, stern face with anxiety and tenderness and unspoken longing in his
eyes. "I will see to all you have charged me with." He placed his other
hand upon the broad shoulder before him. "My son, though I never met, I
knew, your father, and that told me what to look for in you." And now
the rich, deep voice was tremulous, and the kind old eyes were dim with
unshed tears. "The hand of the Lord has been laid in heaviness upon you,
but 'those whom He loveth He chasteneth.' Even could I lift the burden
of your sorrow as easily as I raise this hand, I should falter, because,
as I believe in God, so do I believe that through trial even such as
this your light shall yet shine before men so pure and strong that men
themselves shall be purer and stronger because of it."

There was a moment's pause. Davies stood with bowed head. Cranston,
coming into the hall-way, stopped at sight of them and tiptoed back,
motioning to others to wait. Then the chaplain spoke again,--

"You will write--as soon as--you have decided?"

"I have decided," was the low, calm answer.

"And----?"

"Yes, we go to-night. She is not too ill to move, and once at Urbana--no
one need know."

"Do you mean----?" began the chaplain.

"I mean," said Davies, looking calmly and with dry, tired eyes into the
chaplain's face, "that she is utterly alone in the world,--homeless,
friendless. Who knows but that her story may be true, despite
indications? What would be her fate if I were to fail her now? It was
'for better, for worse,' chaplain. I have tried to do my duty in the
past. God help me to do it to the end."

The tears were running down the old clergyman's face when, around the
corner, he came suddenly on Cranston and his friends, and they seemed to
understand.

* * * * *

There was a new post commander at Scott when the first snows fell that
winter, for honest Pegleg had retired and Leonard had a colonel after
his own heart, and the Fortieth sang songs of praise when the campaign
was over, and moved into quarters and renewed acquaintances with their
families and "assurances" with the Eleventh when they happened to meet
along the Union Pacific, and said they sorely