til now----"

His voice dropped to a whisper:

"It has been a holy thing to me, this blue uniform that cost me the life
which you gave back at the risk of your own----"

"I was in no danger. I had powerful friends."

"They might not have been powerful enough--but it's sacred for another
reason--as precious to me as the seamless robe for which the Roman
soldiers cast lots on Calvary--I wore it in the one glorious moment in
which I held you in my arms, dearest."

"O Ned, Boy, you shouldn't be so foolish!"

"I'm not. I'm sensible. I've done no more scout work since. I said that
my life was yours and I had no right to place it again in such mad
danger----"

"And so you face death on the field!"

"Yes, come sit here, dearest, I've made a seat for you of the broken
timbers from the bridge. We can see the moonlit river and the lazy turn
of the old wheel while we talk."

He led her to the seat in the edge of the moonlight and Betty drew a
deep breath of joy as she drank in the beauty of the entrancing scene.
The shadows of night had hidden the scars of war. Only the tall stone
piers standing, lone sentinels in the river, marked its ravages where
the bridge had fallen. The moon had flung her sparkling silver veil over
the blood-stained world.

"You know," Ned went on eagerly, "those big pillars won't stand there
naked long. We'll put the timbers back on them soon and run our trains
through to Washington----"

"Sh, Ned," Betty whispered, touching his arm lightly, "be still a
moment, I want to feel this wonderful scene!"

The air was sweet with the perfume of apple blossoms, the water from the
old wheel fell with silvery echo and ran rippling over the stones into
the river. Somewhere above the cliff a negro was playing a banjo and far
down the river, beside a little cottage torn with shot and shell, but
still standing, a mocking-bird was singing in the lilac bushes.

The girl looked at Ned with curious tenderness, and wondered if she had
known her own heart after all--wondered if the fierce blinding passion
she had once felt for his brother had been the divine thing that links
the soul to the eternal? A strange spiritual beauty enveloped this
younger man and drew her to-night with new power. There was something
restful in its mystery. She wondered vaguely if it were possible to love
two men at the same moment. She could almost swear it were. If she had
never really loved John Vaughan at all! Why had his powerful, b