years before Captain Coytmore, then the commandant, had been murdered at
a conference by the treacherous Cherokees. The senior officer, Captain
Howard, being absent on leave, the present commandant, a jaunty
lieutenant, smart enough although in an undress uniform, was standing at
the sally-port now, all bland and smiling, to receive the ambassador and
his linguister. He perceived at once that the old gentleman was deaf
beyond any save adroit and accustomed communication. He looked puzzled
for a moment, then spoke to the sergeant.

"And who is this pretty little girl?" he asked.

The sergeant, who had heard of her prowess in the havoc of hearts among
the herders at the ranch, looked bewildered, then desperate, saluted
mechanically, and was circumspectly silent.

"I am not a little girl," said Peninnah Penelope Anne Mivane with adult
dignity.

"Ah, indeed," said the embarrassed and discomfited officer. Then,
turning to lead the way, he added civilly, "Beg pardon, I'm sure!"

If the sight of the sixteen guns on the four bastions of Fort Prince
George had caused Peninnah Penelope Anne to shrink from her normal
proportions, not too expansive at best, she dwindled visibly and
continually when conducted within the palisaded parapets, across the
parade, past the barracks, built for a hundred men but now somewhat
lacking their complement, and into the officers' quarters, where in a
large mess-hall there sat all the commissioned officers at a table, near
the foot of which the two strangers were accommodated with chairs. It
had so much the air of a court-martial, despite their bland and
reassuring suavity, that Peninnah Penelope Anne, albeit a free lance and
serving under no banner but her own whim, had much ado to keep up her
courage to face them. Naturally she was disposed to lean upon her
grandfather, but he utterly failed her. She had never known him so deaf!
He could neither hear the officers nor her familiar voice. He would not
even tell his name, although she had so often heard him voice it
sonorously and in great pride, "Richard Mivane Huntley Mivane, youngest
son of the late Sir Alexander Mivane Huntley Mivane, of Mivane Hall,
Fenshire, Northumberland." Now he merely waved his hand to deputize her.
In truth he shrank from rehearsing to these young men the reason of his
flight from home, his duel and its fatal result, although his pride
forbade him to suppress it. He had come to think the cause of quarrel a
trifle,