le
opportunity, and these, too, she welcomes with laughing grace and
cordiality. She is a glowing, radiant, gorgeous beauty this cool autumn,
and she rides and drives and dances, and, the women say, flirts, and
looks handsomer every day, and poor Armitage is beginning to look very
grave and depressed. "He wooes and wins not," is the cry. His wound has
almost healed, so far as the thigh is concerned, and his crutches are
discarded, but his heart is bleeding, and it tells on his general
condition. The doctors say he ought to be getting well faster, and so
they tell Miss Renwick,--at least somebody does; but still she relents
not, and it is something beyond the garrison's power of conjecture to
decide what the result will be. Into her pretty white-and-yellow room no
one penetrates except at her invitation, even when the garrison ladies
are spending the day at the colonel's; and even if they did there would
be no visible sign by which they could judge whether his flowers were
treasured or his picture honored above others. Into her brave and
beautiful nature none can gaze and say with any confidence either "she
loves" or "she loves not." Winter comes, with biting cold and blinding
snow, and still there is no sign. The joyous holidays, the glad New
Year, are almost at hand, and still there is no symptom of surrender. No
one dreams of the depth and reverence and gratitude and loyalty and
strength of the love that is burning in her heart until, all of a
sudden, in the most unexpected and astonishing way, it bursts forth in
sight of all.

They had been down skating on the slough, a number of the youngsters and
the daughters of the garrison. Rollins was there, doing the devoted to
Mamie Gray, and already there were gossips whispering that she would
soon forget she ever knew such a beau as Jerrold in the new-found
happiness of another one; Hall was there with the doctor's pretty
daughter, and Mrs. Hoyt was matronizing the party, which would, of
course, have been incomplete without Alice. She had been skating hand in
hand with a devoted young subaltern in the artillery, and poor Armitage,
whose leg was unequal to skating, had been ruefully admiring the scene.
He had persuaded Sloat to go out and walk with him, and Sloat went; but
the hollow mockery of the whole thing became apparent to him after they
had been watching the skaters awhile, and he got chilled and wanted
Armitage to push ahead. The captain said he believed his leg was