ttered and driven the Tontos, had made
some prisoners of squaws and pappooses, who, even to the general,
declared they knew not where the Bennett children had been hidden. The
general was expecting to work southward along the Black Mesa to meet
the column out from the Upper San Carlos under Major Randall ("Big
Chief Jake," the aforementioned) and between them they meant to leave
no stone unturned in the effort to find the boys. Stannard enclosed a
letter for his bonny wife, and closed with a word by way of postscript
over which Archer and the three B's found themselves pondering not a
little.

"Wish we had Harris and 'Tonio with us. Hope they are doing well. The
general is anxious to meet and know them both."

Harris was not well. His convalescence had been interrupted and
impaired, as we have seen, and no man thrives bodily when heart and
soul are sore within him; and, heart and soul, Harris was sore. He was
sitting up, to be sure, but it was plain to be seen he was suffering.
Mrs. Stannard, wise woman that she was, believed she knew something of
the cause and held her peace. Dr. Bentley, believing also that he knew
something of the cause, was not so thoroughly wise. Between Mrs.
Bennett, his patients at the hospital, mostly convalescent, and this
young knight, the doctor was having a busy time of it. Mrs. Bennett
improved not at all, but had at least become less violent in her
anguish. At times she seemed almost in a stupor, and Mrs. Stannard was
beginning to wonder whether the matron, worn out with her lamentations,
had been administering surreptitious opiates. Mrs. Archer's visits had
become less frequent, because for long hours she had had to go and sit
with Lilian and her crippled hero. But now that hero was up and out on
the veranda, basking in the sunshine of love unutterable, though
enjoined as yet to avoid the fervor of that of Arizona. Willett had
never appeared to better advantage in his life than now, in modestly
accepting congratulations, manfully asserting his unworthiness of the
blessing that had come to him, and his determination, please God, to
live a life of devotion to his new-found delight, this sweet floweret
of the desert that so suddenly, so wonderfully, so dominantly had come
to gladden, to bless, to inspire his career. Love is a marvellous
beautifier, mental, moral and physical. In such pure and exquisite
companionship, in the radiance of her presence, in the ecstasy of her
sweet, shy, still