uched hat, but the next moment his voice was heard strong and
clear enough in the road. The little column trotted away as evenly as on
parade. But those who climbed the roof of the barracks a quarter of an
hour later saw, in the moonlight, a white cloud drifting rapidly across
the plain towards the west. It was a small cloud in that bare,
menacing, cruel, and illimitable waste; but in its breast was crammed a
thunderbolt.

It fell thirty miles away, blasting and scattering a thousand warriors
and their camp, giving and taking no quarter, vengeful, exterminating,
and complete. Later there were different opinions about it and the
horrible crime that had provoked it: the opposers of Peter's policy
jubilant over the irony of the assassination of the Apostle of
Peace, Peter's disciples as actively deploring the merciless and
indiscriminating vengeance of the military; and so the problem that
Peter had vainly attempted to solve was left an open question. There
were those, too, who believed that Peter had never sacrificed himself
and his sister for the sake of another, but had provoked and incensed
the savages by the blind arrogance of a reformer. There were wild
stories by scouts and interpreters how he had challenged his fate by
an Indian bravado; how himself and his sister had met torture with
an Indian stoicism, and how the Indian braves themselves at last in a
turmoil of revulsion had dipped their arrows and lances in the heroic
heart's blood of their victims, and worshiped their still palpitating
flesh.

But there was one honest loyal little heart that carried back--three
thousand miles--to England the man as it had known and loved him. Lady
Elfrida Runnybroke never married; neither did she go into retirement,
but lived her life and fulfilled her duties in her usual clear-eyed
fashion. She was particularly kind to all Americans,--barring, I fear, a
few pretty-faced, finely-frocked title-hunters,--told stories of the
Far West, and had theories of a people of which they knew little, cared
less, and believed to be vulgar. But I think she found a new pleasure in
the old church at Ashley Grange, and loved to linger over the effigy of
the old Crusader,--her kinsman, the swashbuckler De Bracy,--with a vague
but pretty belief that devotion and love do not die with brave men, but
live and flourish even in lands beyond the seas.

TWO AMERICANS

Perhaps if there was anything important in the migration of the Maynard
fa