of people went up from town to see the six companies of the fort garrison march up the winding road amid the thunder of welcome from the guns of the light battery and the exultant strains of the band.  Mrs. Maynard and Alice were the only ladies of the circle who were not there:  a son and brother had joined them, after long absence, at Aunt Grace’s cottage at Sablon, was the explanation, and the colonel would bring them home in a few days, after he had attended to some important matters at the fort.  In the first place, Chester had to see to it that the tongue of scandal was slit, so far as the colonel’s household was concerned, and all good people notified that no such thing had happened as was popularly supposed (and “everybody” received the announcement with the remark that she knew all along it couldn’t be so), and that a grievous and absurd but most mortifying blunder had been made.  It was a most unpleasant ghost to “down,” the shadow of that scandal, for it would come up to the surface of garrison chat at all manner of confidential moments; but no man or woman could safely speak of it to Chester.  It was gradually assumed that he was the man who had done all the blundering and that he was supersensitive on the subject.

There was another thing never satisfactorily explained to some of the garrison people, and that was Nina Beaubien’s strange conduct.  In less than a week she was seen on the street in colors,—­brilliant colors,—­when it was known she had ordered deep mourning, and then she suddenly disappeared and went with her silent old mother abroad.  To this day no woman in society understands it, for when she came back, long, long afterwards, it was a subject on which she would never speak.  There were one or two who ventured to ask, and the answer was, “For reasons that concern me alone.”  But it took no great power of mental vision to see that her heart wore black for him forever.

His letter explained it all.  She had received it with a paroxysm of passionate grief and joy, kissed it, covered it with wildest caresses before she began to read, and then, little by little, as the words unfolded before her staring eyes, turned cold as stone: 

“It is my last night of life, Nina, and I am glad ’tis so.  Proud and sensitive as I am, the knowledge that every man in my regiment has turned from me,—­that I have not a friend among them,—­that there is no longer a place for me in their midst,—­more than all, that I deserve their contempt,—­has broken my heart.  We will be in battle before the setting of another sun.  Any man who seeks death in Indian fight can find it easily enough, and I can compel their respect in spite of themselves.  They will not recognize me, living, as one of them; but dying on the field, they have to place me on their roll of honor.