daily duties with an
aching heart. There was no woman at Fort Frayne who did not know that
Esther Dade thought all the world of Beverly Field. There was only one
man who apparently had no inkling of it--Beverly Field himself.

She was the only daughter of a veteran officer, a captain of infantry,
who at the age of fifty, after having held a high command in the
volunteers during the civil war, was still meekly doing duty as a
company officer of regulars nearly two decades after. She had been
carefully reared by a most loving and thoughtful mother, even in the
crude old days of the army, when its fighting force was scattered in
small detachments all over the wide frontier, and men, and women, too,
lived on soldier rations, eked out with game, and dwelt in tents or
ramshackle, one-storied huts, "built by the labor of troops." At twelve
she had been placed at school in the far East, while her father enjoyed
a two years' tour on recruiting service, and there, under the care of a
noble woman who taught her girls to be women indeed--not vapid votaries
of pleasure and fashion, Esther spent five useful years, coming back to
her fond father's soldier roof a winsome picture of girlish health and
grace and comeliness--a girl who could ride, walk and run if need be,
who could bake and cook, mend and sew, cut, fashion and make her own
simple wardrobe; who knew algebra, geometry and "trig" quite as well as,
and history, geography and grammar far better than, most of the young
West Pointers; a girl who spoke her own tongue with accuracy and was not
badly versed in French; a girl who performed fairly well on the piano
and guitar, but who sang full-throated, rejoiceful, exulting like the
lark--the soulful music that brought delight to her ageing father, half
crippled by the wounds of the war days, and to the mother who so
devotedly loved and carefully planned for her. Within a month from her
graduation at Madame Piatt's she had become the darling of Fort Frayne,
the pet of many a household, the treasure of her own. With other young
gallants of the garrison, Beverly Field had been prompt to call, prompt
to be her escort when dance or drive, ride or picnic was planned in her
honor, especially the ride, for Mr. Adjutant Field loved the saddle, the
open prairie or the bold, undulating bluffs. But Field was the busiest
man at the post. Other youngsters, troop or company subalterns, had far
more time at their disposal, and begged for rides and