run through the racked body, she
leaned over and kissed her father full on the lips.

Then her heart broke. She ran blindly out into the night.

While the Bishop was straightening the body on the couch, a young man
and two women came into the room.

They were Jeffrey Whiting and his mother and her sister, neighbours
whom Arsene had brought.

The Bishop was much relieved with their coming. He could do nothing
more now, and the long night ride was still ahead of him.

He told the young man that the girl, Ruth, had gone out into the cold,
and asked him to find her.

Jeffrey Whiting went out quickly. He had played with Ruth Lansing
since she was a baby, for they were the only children on Lansing
Mountain. He knew where he would find her.

Mrs. Whiting, a keen-faced, capable woman of the hills, where people
had to meet their problems and burdens alone, took command at once.

"No, sir," she replied to the Bishop's question, "there's nobody to
send for. The Lansings didn't have a relation living that anybody ever
heard of, and I knew the old folks, too, Tom Lansing's father and
mother. They're buried out there on the hill where he'll be buried.

"There's some old soldiers down the West Slope towards Beaver River.
They'll want to take charge, I suppose. The funeral must be on
Monday," she went on rapidly, sketching in the programme. "We have a
preacher if we can get one. But when we can't my sister Letty here
sings something."

"Tom Lansing was a comrade of mine, in a way," said the Bishop slowly.
"At least, I was at Fort Fisher with him. I think I should like to--"

"Were you at Fort Fisher?" broke in the sister Letty, speaking for the
first time. "And did you see Curtis' colour bearer? He was killed in
the first charge. A tall, dark boy, Jay Hamilton, with long, black
hair?"

"He had an old scar over his eye-brow." The Bishop supplemented the
description out of the memory of that day.

"He got it skating on Beaver Run, thirty-five years ago to-morrow,"
said the woman trembling. "You saw him die?"

"He was dead when I came to him," said the Bishop quietly, "with the
stock of the colour standard still clenched in his hand."

"He was my--my--" Sweetheart, she wanted to say. But the hill women do
not say things easily.

"Yes?" said the Bishop gently. "I understand." She was a woman of his
people. Clearly as if she had taken an hour to tell it, he could read
the years of her faithfulness to the memory of that