very hour of their
arrival--when the consul came aboard with a batch of letters in his hand,
he had one for Mrs. Frost. She had barely glanced at its contents before
she was stricken with a fit of trembling, tore it in half, and tossed the
fragments on the swift ebbing tide, then rushed to her stateroom. There
she added a postscript to the long letter penned to Margaret on the
voyage; and the purser, not her husband, saw it safely started on the
Gaelic, leaving for San Francisco via Honolulu that very day. That letter
beat the ordinary mail, for the Queen was heading seaward, even as the
Gaelic came steaming in the coral-guarded harbor, and a little packet was
tossed aboard the new troop ship as she sped away, one missive in it
telling Witchie Garrison that the man whose life had been wrecked by her
sister's enforced desertion was already in Manila awaiting her coming,
and telling her, moreover, that the packet placed in General Drayton's
hands contained only her earlier letters. In his reckless wrath Latrobe
had told her that those which bound her to him by the most solemn
pledges, those that vowed undying love and devotion, were still in his
hands, and that she should see him and them when at last she reached
Manila.

Three mortal weeks had the sisters been there together, and never once in
that time did Nita venture forth except when under escort of her
black-browed husband or the protection of her smiling, witching, yet
vigilant Margaret. Never once had their house been approached by any one
who bore resemblance to the dreaded lover. All along the Calle Real, where
were the quarters of many officers, little guards of regulars were
stationed; for black rumors of Filipino uprising came with every few days,
and some men's hearts were failing them for fear when they thought of the
paucity of their numbers as compared with the thousands of fanatical
natives to whom the taking of human life was of less account than the loss
of a game chicken, and in whose sight assassination was a virtue when it
rid one of a foe. Already many an officer who had weakly yielded to the
importunity of a devoted wife was cursing the folly that led him to let
her join him. The outbreak was imminent. Any one could see the war was
sure to come--even those who strove to banish alarm and reassure an
anxious nation. And when the call to arms should sound, duty, honor and
law would demand each soldier's instant answer on the battle line, then
who wa