before he had thought life a black void when the girl he fancied while yet he wore the Academic gray calmly told him she preferred another.  Nor had the intervening years been devoid of their occasional yearnings for a mate of his own in the isolation of the frontier or the monotony of garrison life; but flitting fancies had left no trace upon his strong heart.  The love of his life only dawned upon him at this late day when he looked into her glorious eyes and his whole soul went out in passionate worship of the fair girl whose presence made that sunlit lane a heaven.  Were he to live a thousand years, no scene on earth could rival in his eyes the love-haunted woodland pathway wherein like forest queen she stood, the sunshine and leafy shadows dancing over her graceful form, the golden-rod enhancing her dark and glowing beauty, the sacred influences of the day throwing their mystic charm about her as though angels guarded and shielded her from harm.  His life had reached its climax; his fate was sealed; his heart and soul were centred in one sweet girl,—­and all in one brief hour in the woodland lane at Sablon.

She could not fail to see the deep emotion in his eyes as at last she turned to break the silence.

“Shall we go?” she said, simply.

“It is time; but I wish we could remain.”

“You do not go to church very often at Sibley, do you?”

“I have not, heretofore; but you would teach me to worship.”  “You have taught me,” he muttered below his breath, as he extended a hand to assist her down the sloping bank towards the avenue.  She looked up quickly once more, pleased, yet shy, and shifted her great bunch of golden-rod so that she could lay her hand in his and lean upon its steady strength down the incline; and so, hand in hand, with old Dobbin ambling placidly behind, they passed out from the shaded pathway to the glow and radiance of the sunlit road.

XII.

“Colonel Maynard, I admit everything you say as to the weight of the evidence,” said Frank Armitage, twenty minutes later, “but it is my faith—­understand me:  my faith, I say—­that she is utterly innocent.  As for that damnable letter, I do not believe it was ever written to her.  It is some other woman.”

“What other is there, or was there?” was the colonel’s simple reply.

“That is what I mean to find out.  Will you have my baggage sent after me to-night?  I am going at once to the station, and thence to Sibley.  I will write you from there.  If the midnight visitor should prove to have been Jerrold, he can be made to explain.  I have always held him to be a conceited fop, but never either crack-brained or devoid of principle.  There is no time for explanation now.  Good-by; and keep a good lookout.  That fellow may be here again.”