colonel's veranda, shone and sparkled in the radiant light. The
roses in the little garden, and the old-fashioned morning-glory vines
over at the east side, were all a-glitter in the flooding sunshine when
the bugler came out from a glance at the clock in the adjutant's office
and sounded "sick-call" to the indifferent ear of the garrison. Once
each day, at 7.30 a.m., the doctor trudged across to the
hospital and looked over the half-dozen "hopelessly healthy" but
would-be invalids who wanted to get off guard duty or a morning at the
range. Thanks to the searching examination to which every soldier must
be subjected before he can enter the service of Uncle Sam, and to the
disciplined order of the lives of the men at Sibley, maladies of any
serious nature were almost unknown. It was a gloriously healthy post, as
everybody admitted, and, to judge from the specimen of young-womanhood
that came singing, "blithe and low," out among the roses this same
joyous morning, exuberant physical well-being was not restricted to the
men.

A fairer picture never did dark beauty present than Alice Renwick, as
she bent among the bushes or reached high among the vines in search of
her favorite flowers. Tall, slender, willowy, yet with
exquisitely-rounded form; slim, dainty little hands and feet; graceful
arms and wrists all revealed in the flowing sleeves of her snowy,
web-like gown, fitting her and displaying her sinuous grace of form as
gowns so seldom do to-day. And then her face!--a glorious picture of
rich, ripe, tropical beauty, with its great, soulful, sunlit eyes,
heavily shaded though they were with those wondrous lashes; beautiful,
too, in contour as was the lithe body, and beautiful in every feature,
even to the rare and dewy curve of her red lips, half opened as she
sang. She was smiling to herself, as she crooned her soft, murmuring
melody, and every little while the great dark eyes glanced over towards
the shaded doors of Bachelors' Row. There was no one up to watch and
tell: why should she not look thither, and even stand one moment peering
under the veranda at a darkened window half-way down the row, as though
impatient at the non-appearance of some familiar signal? How came the
laggard late? How slept the knight while here his lady stood impatient?
She twined the leaves and roses in a fragrant knot, ran lightly within
and laid them on the snowy cloth beside the colonel's seat at table,
came forth and plucked some more and