straightforward challenge to
Aunt Janet. As soon as he could walk unaided, save by his stick, Wren
had gone stumping down the line to Sanders's quarters and asked for
Mr. Blakely, with whom he had an uninterrupted talk of half an hour.
Within two days thereafter Mr. Blakely in person returned the call,
being received with awful state and solemnity by Miss Wren herself.
Angela, summoned by her father's voice, came flitting down a moment
later, and there in the little army parlor, where first she had sought
to "entertain" him until the captain should appear, our Angela was
once again brought face to face with him who had meanwhile risked his
life in the effort to rescue her father, and again in the effort to
find and rescue her. A fine blush mantled her winsome face as she
entered, and, without a glance at Janet, went straightway to their
visitor, with extended hand.

"I am so glad to see you again, Mr. Blakely," she bravely began. "I
have--so much--to thank you--" but her brown eyes fell before the fire
in the blue and her whole being thrilled at the fervor of his
handclasp. She drew her hand away, the color mounting higher, then
snuggled to her father's side with intent to take his arm; but,
realizing suddenly how her own was trembling, grasped instead the back
of a chair. Blakely was saying something, she knew not what, nor could
she ever recall much that anyone said during the brief ten minutes of
his stay, for there sat Aunt Janet, bolt upright, after the fashion of
fifty years gone by, a formidable picture indeed, and Angela wondered
that anyone could say anything at all.

Next time they met she was riding home and he sat on the south veranda
with Mrs. Sanders and Kate. She would have ridden by with just a nod
and smile; but, at sight of her, he "hobbled" down the steps and came
hurriedly out to speak, whereupon Mrs. Sanders, who knew much better,
followed to "help him," as she said. "Help, indeed!" quoth angry Kate,
usually most dutiful of daughters. "You'd only hinder!" But even that
presence had not stopped his saying: "The doctor promises I may ride
Hart's single-footer in a day or two, Miss Angela, and then--"

And now it was a "single-footer" coming, the only one at Sandy. Of
course it might be Hart, not Blakely, and yet Blakely had seen her as
she rode away. It was Blakely's voice--how seldom she had heard, yet
how well she knew it! answering the joyous welcome of the hounds. It
was Blakely who came riding