bless him and, in her turn, to be made much of and forbidden to leave, and then, after her big brother’s return to duty with the battalion, now being fed and feted by all the North Side, he must needs come over every evening to see her; and, now that presentable uniforms have arrived and the rough beards have been shaved and the men of the old regiment look less like “toughs,” but no more like American soldiers as our soldiers look in the field of their sternest service, her sisterly pride in her big brother is beautiful to see,—­so is her self-abnegation, for, somehow or other, though he comes to see her he stays to look at Ruth Harvey, shy, silent, and beautiful, and soon, as though by common consent, that corner of the big parlor is given up to those two, the tall, stalwart trooper and the slender, willowy girl.  And one evening he comes earlier than usual in manifest discomposure, and soon it transpires that important orders have reached him.  Fanny turns pale.  “Are you—­all—­ordered back?” she cries, and is for an instant radiant at his assurance that the order involves only himself.  He is called to department head-quarters to report in person to the general commanding, who is about to make a tour through the mountains in Northwestern Wyoming and wants Drummond with the escort.  She is radiant only until she catches sight of her sister’s face.  It is not so very warm an evening, yet she marshals the household out on the steps, out on the back veranda,—­anywhere out of that parlor, where, just as the faint notes of the trumpets are heard, sounding their martial “tattoo,” and just as Lieutenant Wing, returning from a tiptoed visit to his sleeping boy and escaped for the moment from the vigilance of his wife, now happens to go blundering in,—­there is heard from the dimly-lighted corner near the piano the sound of subdued sobbing, the sound of a deep, manly voice, low, soothing, wondrously happy, the sound—­a sound—­indescribable in appropriate English, yet never misunderstood,—­a sound at which Wing halts short, pauses one instant irresolute; then faces about and goes tip-toeing out into the brilliant sheen of the vestibule lamps,—­into the brilliant gleam of his fond wife’s questioning, reproachful eyes.

And for all answer, it being perhaps too public a spot for other demonstration, Wing simply hugs himself.

That night, under the arching roof of the great railway station, the comrades, so long united by the ties of such respect and affection as are engendered only by years of danger and hardship borne in common, and now so happily united by a closer tie, are pacing the platform absorbed in parting words.

“Jim, think what a load I’ve had to carry all these five years and forbidden by my good angel to breathe a word of it to you.”

“I can’t realize my own happiness, old man.  I never dreamed that, after she got out into the world and saw for herself, that she would remember her girlish fancy or have another thought for me.”