" said the colonel, slowly, "that won't be hard for the rest of
you, and it don't matter much for me, and I hope we ain't going to lose
our music."

"No, indeed!" cried Kate, sitting down at the piano, while the colonel
leaned back in his easy chair and gave himself up to an hour's unmingled
delight.

"You have given more pleasure than you know to a wayfaring man," he
said, as he bade her good night.

"Come again, when you are in town, you are always welcome, Colonel
Thorp," she said.

"You may count me here every time," said the colonel. Then turning to
Mrs. Murray, with a low bow, he said, "you have given me some ideas
madam, that I hope may not be quite unfruitful, and as for that young
man of yours, well--I--guess--you ain't--hurt his cause any. We'll put
up a fight, anyway."

"I am glad to have met you, Colonel Thorp," said Mrs. Murray, "and I am
quite sure you will stand up for what is right," and with another bow
the colonel took his leave.

"Now, Harry, you must go, too," said Kate; "you can see your aunt again
after to-morrow, and I must get my beauty sleep, besides I don't want
to stand up with a man gaunt and hollow-eyed for lack of sleep," and she
bundled him off in spite of his remonstrances. But eager as Kate was for
her beauty sleep, the light burned late in her room; and long after
she had seen Mrs. Murray snugly tucked in for the night, she sat with
Ranald's open letter in her hand, reading it till she almost knew it by
heart. It told, among other things, of his differences with the
company in regard to stores, wages, and supplies, and of his efforts to
establish a reading-room at the mills, and a library at the camps; but
there was a sentence at the close of the letter that Kate read over and
over again with the light of a great love in her eyes and with a cry of
pain in her heart. "The magazines and papers that Kate sends are a great
boon. Dear Kate, what a girl she is! I know none like her; and what
a friend she has been to me ever since the day she stood up for me at
Quebec. You remember I told you about that. What a guy I must have been,
but she never showed a sign of shame. I often think of that now, how
different she was from another! I see it now as I could not then--a man
is a fool once in his life, but I have got my lesson and still have a
good true friend." Often she read and long she pondered the last words.
It was so easy to read too much into them. "A good, true friend." She
looked