he was to have spent the morning with her, the woman to
whom he had lied in word, while she to whom he had lied in word and deed
was going from him, not to return until the german, and even then he
planned treachery. He meant to lead with Alice Renwick and claim that it
_must_ be with the colonel's daughter because the ladies of the garrison
were the givers. Then, he knew, Nina would not come at all, and,
possibly, might quarrel with him on that ground. What could have been an
easier solution of his troublous predicament? She would break their
secret engagement; he would refuse all reconciliation, and be free to
devote himself to Alice. But all these grave complications had arisen.
Alice would not come. Nina wrote demanding that he should lead with her,
and that he should meet her at St. Croix; and then came the crash. He
owed his safety to her self-sacrifice, and now must give up all hope of
Alice Renwick. He had accepted the announcement of their engagement. He
_could_ not do less, after all that had happened and the painful scene
at their parting. And yet would it not be a blessing to her if he were
killed? Even now in his self-abnegation and misery he did not fully
realize how mean he was,--how mean he seemed to others. He resented in
his heart what Sloat had said of him but the day before, little caring
whether he heard it or not: "It would be a mercy to that poor girl if
Jerrold were killed. He will break her heart with neglect, or drive her
mad with jealousy, inside of a year." But the regiment seemed to agree
with Sloat.

And so in all that little band of comrades he could call no man friend.
One after another he looked upon the unconscious faces, cold and averted
in the oblivion of sleep, but not more cold, not more distrustful, than
when he had vainly sought among them one relenting glance in the early
moonlight that battle eve in bivouac. He threw his arms upward, shook
his head with hopeless gesture, then buried his face in the sleeves of
his rough campaign overcoat and strode blindly from their midst.

Early in the morning, an hour before daybreak, the shivering out-post
crouching in a hollow to the southward catch sight of two dim figures
shooting suddenly up over a distant ridge,--horsemen, they know at a
glance,--and these two come loping down the moonlit trail over which two
nights before had marched the cavalry speeding to the rescue, over which
in an hour the regiment itself must be on the move. Old c