t sight of the
lovely picture of Alice in the Directoire costume. He longed for it and
could not resist. She had grown so beautiful, so exquisite. He took it,
frame and all, carried it into her room, slipped the card from its place
and hid it inside the breast of his shirt, stowed the frame away behind
her sofa-pillow, then looked long at the lovely picture she herself
made, lying there sleeping sweetly and peacefully amid the white
drapings of her dainty bed. Then 'twas time to go. He put the lamp back
in the hall, passed through her room, out at her window, and down the
ladder, and had it well on the way back to the hooks on Jerrold's fence
when seized and challenged by the officer of the day. Mad terror
possessed him then. He struck blindly, dashed off in panicky flight,
paid no heed to sentry's cry or whistling missile, but tore like a racer
up the path and never slackened speed till Sibley was far behind.

When morning came, the order that they should go was temporarily
suspended: some prisoners were sent to a neighboring military prison,
and he was placed in charge, and on his return from this duty learned
that the colonel's family had gone to Sablon. The next thing there was
some strange talk that worried him,--a story that one of the men who had
a sweetheart who was second girl at Mrs. Hoyt's brought out to camp,--a
story that there was an officer who was too much in love with Alice to
keep away from the house even after the colonel so ordered, and that he
was prowling around the other night and the colonel ordered Leary to
shoot him,--Leary, who was on post on Number Five. He felt sure that
something was wrong,--felt sure that it was due to his night visit,--and
his first impulse was to find his mother and confide the truth to her.
He longed to see her again, and if harm had been done, to make himself
known and explain everything. Having no duties to detain him, he got a
pass to visit town and permission to be gone a day or more. On Saturday
evening he ran down to Sablon, drove over, as Captain Armitage had
already told them, and, peering in his mother's room, saw her, still up,
though in her nightdress. He never dreamed of the colonel's being out
and watching. He had "scouted" all those trees, and no one was nigh.
Then he softly called; she heard, and was coming to him, when again came
fierce attack: he had all a soldier's reverence for the person of the
colonel, and would never have harmed him had he known 'tw