good will, and seemed all oblivious of the bullets that went
zipping past his frosting head. Young Rollins, to his inexpressible
pride and comfort, had a bullet-hole through his scouting-hat and
another through his shoulder-strap that raised a big welt on the white
skin beneath, but, to the detriment of promotion, no captain was killed,
and Jerrold gave the only file.

The one question at Sibley was, "What will Nina Beaubien do?"

She did nothing. She would see nobody from the instant the news came.
She had hardly slept at night,--was always awake at dawn and out at the
gate to get the earliest copy of the morning papers; but the news
reached them at nightfall, and when some of the ladies from the fort
drove in to offer their sympathy and condolence in the morning, and to
make tender inquiry, the answer at the door was that Miss Nina saw
nobody, that her mother alone was with her, and that "she was very
still." And so it went for some days. Then there came the return of the
command to Sibley; and hundreds of people went up from town to see the
six companies of the fort garrison march up the winding road amid the
thunder of welcome from the guns of the light battery and the exultant
strains of the band. Mrs. Maynard and Alice were the only ladies of the
circle who were not there: a son and brother had joined them, after long
absence, at Aunt Grace's cottage at Sablon, was the explanation, and the
colonel would bring them home in a few days, after he had attended to
some important matters at the fort. In the first place, Chester had to
see to it that the tongue of scandal was slit, so far as the colonel's
household was concerned, and all good people notified that no such thing
had happened as was popularly supposed (and "everybody" received the
announcement with the remark that she knew all along it couldn't be so),
and that a grievous and absurd but most mortifying blunder had been
made. It was a most unpleasant ghost to "down," the shadow of that
scandal, for it would come up to the surface of garrison chat at all
manner of confidential moments; but no man or woman could safely speak
of it to Chester. It was gradually assumed that he was the man who had
done all the blundering and that he was supersensitive on the subject.

There was another thing never satisfactorily explained to some of the
garrison people, and that was Nina Beaubien's strange conduct. In less
than a week she was seen on the street in colors,--brilli