it in with everything else that had happened. It took a man with a will
of his own and an unshaken faith in woman to stand firm against such
evidence."

And, though Alice Renwick was silent, she appreciated the fact none the
less. Day after day she clung to her stalwart brother's side. She had
ceased to ask questions about Captain Armitage and the strange greeting
after the first day or two, but, oddly enough, she could never let him
talk long of any subject but that campaign, of his ride with the captain
to the front, of the long talk they had had, and the stirring fight
and the magnificent way in which Armitage had handled his long
skirmish-line. He was enthusiastic in his praise of the tall Saxon
captain. He soon noted how silent and absorbed she sat when he was the
theme of discourse; he incidentally mentioned little things "he" had
said about "her" that morning, and marked how her color rose and her
eyes flashed quick, joyful, questioning glance at his face, then fell in
maiden shyness. He had speedily gauged the cause of that strange
excitement displayed by Armitage at seeing him the morning he rode in
with the scout. Now he was gauging, with infinite delight, the other
side of the question. The brother-like, he began to twit and tease her;
and that was the last of the confidences.

All the same it was an eager group that surrounded the colonel the
evening he came down with the captain's letter. "It settles the thing in
my mind. We'll go back to Sibley to-morrow; and as for you,
Sergeant-Major Fred, your name has gone in for a commission, and I've no
doubt a very deserving sergeant will be spoiled in making a very
good-for-nothing second lieutenant. Get you back to your regiment, sir,
and call on Captain Armitage as soon as you reach Fort Russell, and tell
him you are much obliged. He has been blowing your trumpet for you
there; and, as some of those cavalrymen have sense enough to appreciate
the opinion of such a soldier as my ex-adjutant,--some of them, mind
you: I don't admit that all cavalrymen have sense enough to keep them
out of perpetual trouble,--you came in for a hearty endorsement, and
you'll probably be up before the next board for examination. Go and bone
your Constitution, and the Rule of Three, and who was the father of
Zebedee's children, and the order of the Ptolemies and the Seleucidae,
and other such things that they'll be sure to ask you as indispensable
to the mental outfit of an Indian-fight