said--that she was a witch, and got news
of our movements by magic. Nothing escaped her--she had a wonderful
mind, and did not know what fear was. A wonderful woman!"

He was smiling to himself again as he sat, with his great shoulders bent
forward and his scarred hand on his knee, looking into the fire.

"General," I said tentatively, "aren't you going to tell me what she
said when she saw you come into her father's tent?"

"Said?" asked the General, looking up and frowning. "What could she say?
Good-morning, I guess."

I wasn't afraid of his frown or of his hammer-and-tongs manner. I'd got
behind both before now. I persisted.

"But I mean--what did you say to each other, like the day before--how
did it all come out?"

"Oh, we couldn't do any love-making, if that's what you mean," he
explained in a business-like way, "because the old man was on deck. And
I had to leave in about ten minutes to ride back to join my command.
That was all there was to it."

I sighed with disappointment. Of course I knew it was just an idyll of
youth, a day long, and that the book was closed forty years before. But
I could not bear to have it closed with a bang. Somewhere in the
narrative had come to me the impression that the heroine of it had died
young in those exciting war-times of long ago. I had a picture in my
mind of the dancing eyes closed meekly in a last sleep; of the young
officer's hand laid sorrowing on the bright halo of hair.

"Did you ever see the girl again?" I asked softly.

The General turned on me a quick, queer look. Fun was in it, and memory
gave it gentleness; yet there was impatience, too, at my slowness, in
the boyish brown eyes.

"Mrs. Carruthers has red hair," he said briefly.

THROUGH THE IVORY GATE

Breeze-filtered through shifting leafage, the June morning sunlight came
in at the open window by the boy's bed, under the green shades, across
the shadowy, white room, and danced a noiseless dance of youth and
freshness and springtime against the wall opposite. The boy's head
stirred on his pillow. He spoke a quick word from out of his dream. "The
key?" he said inquiringly, and the sound of his own voice awoke him.
Dark, drowsy eyes opened, and he stared half seeing, at the picture that
hung facing him. Was it the play of mischievous sunlight, was it the
dream that still held his brain? He knew the picture line by line, and
there was no such figure in it. It was a large photograph of Fairfield