ng like the steamer of the summer twice gone
by as it pitched through the "roaring forties." He remembered trying to
make his way back towards that corner--where the horses went down--there
were friends there--and that big policeman--he'd help. The lamp-post
leaned over and tapped him hard on top of the head. He tried to grapple
it, but the right arm would not answer. Then his feet shot out from
under him on the icy pavement, and the curb flew up and struck him a
violent blow at the base of the skull.

Ten minutes later, as Jeannette Wallen was rejoicing over the returning
consciousness of a sorely bumped but otherwise unharmed little maid, and
hugging that precious niece to her heart, while the doctor administered
a soothing draught, and Mrs. Wells was pulling off the pygmy shoes and
stocking, the servant admitted an abashed citizen who faltered at the
parlor door and mumbled, "Say, doctor, that gen'l'm'n that saved that
little girl must 'a' got badly hurt. He's lyin' out here down the
street--senseless----"

That was all Jeannette heard. Who caught little Kate was a question the
distracted aunt never asked until many a long day after. Nobody caught
_her_ until, a dozen doors away, under the gas-light, in the midst of a
little knot of neighbors, a battered, bleeding head was lifted from a
rough coat-sleeve, and, folded in the slender, clasping arms of a
kneeling girl, was pillowed on the pure heart where the baby curls were
nestling but a moment before.

Fractured ribs and collar-bones yield not unreadily to treatment; even
fractured skulls have been known to mend; and in a week, though dazed
and bewildered, Captain Forrest was convalescing. Cranston and other
fellows from the fort were in frequent attendance. The army surgeon from
head-quarters had been unflagging, and Colonel Kenyon himself was at the
railway station when the "Limited" arrived from New York, bringing a
much-alarmed mother and sister, who relieved, if they did not entirely
replace, certain other nurses at the patient's bedside. Upon their
arrival, after three days and nights of vigil, Miss Wallen disappeared.
She betook herself to Miss Bonner's refuge far down town, and just what
Mrs. Forrest could have heard from the Cranstons, from her son's
commanding officer, and from the fluent lips of Mrs. Wells, the reader
may best conjecture, for it is a recorded fact that no sooner was her
son out of all danger and well on the road to recovery than two ladi