hink or how to act. I must hold council with my officers
immediately--hear their opinions without divulging aught of what
you have related, and act as my own judgment confirms. How
unfortunate! Ronayne and his wife, accompanied by Von Voltenberg,
have taken it into their heads to ride to Hardscrabble, and God
knows when they will be back. Really, this is most annoying."

At that moment a terrible shriek, as that of a man in his last
fearful agony, was heard without. Struck with sudden dismay, both
Captain Headley and his wife rushed to the door, which they reached
even as Ensign Ronayne, pale, without his hat, his hair blowing in
the breeze, and his cheek colorless as death, was in the act of
falling from his jaded horse, whose trembling limbs and sides
covered with foam, attested the desperate speed with which he had
been ridden.

"Oh, God! he has heard all--he knows all," murmured Mrs. Headley,
as she fell back in the arms of her husband. "Now, then, is the
drama of horror but commenced."

Before the unfortunate officer could be--raised and carried to his
apartments by the sympathizing soldiers of the garrison, another
horseman followed into the fort. It was Doctor Van Voltenberg,
whose flushed face and excited appearance denoted the speed at
which he too had ridden. He flung himself from his horse, and
followed anxiously to the apartment of his friend.

But where was the third of the party? where was Maria, the universally
beloved of every soldier of that garrison? where was Mrs. Ronayne?

CHAPTER III.

"A sailor's wife had chestnuts in her lap, and mouncht."
--_Macbeth_

"Thy abundant goodness shall excuse this deadly blot in
thy digressing son."
--_Richard II._

Little more than a month had elapsed since the marriage of the
impetuous and generous Ensign Ronayne to the woman he adored.
Absorbed by the intensity of their passion, fed by the solitude
around, each day increased their attachment, and their full hearts
acknowledged that the love which the man bears to his mistress--the
affianced sharer of his inmost thoughts--is passionless compared
with that which follows the mystic tie, linking their most secret
being in fearlessness of devotion. Then, for the first time, had
they felt and acknowledged all the power of the beauty of God's
holy ordinance, which seemed to wed not in mere form, but in fact,
the deepest emotions of their glowing souls. What was the world to
them? The