ugh the post. Everybody knew it, and everybody smiled
upon Broussard and Anita; even second lieutenants who envied
Broussard's luck; good wishes and kind congratulations were showered
upon them.

It was a very gay ball; as Colonel Fortescue held, the sharp cold, the
radiant arc lights, always going, the wall of ice by which the fort was
surrounded, gave an edge to joy as well as to pain. To mark this last
ball of the year the young officers introduced some of the prankish
features of their happy cadet days.

At five minutes to midnight, when the great floor was a whirl of dainty
young girls, their heads crowned with roses or with flashing ornaments
that matched their sparkling eyes, and with dashing young officers,
glittering in gold and blue, the band, with Neroda leading, stopped
suddenly. A handsome young bugler appeared and in the midst of the
tense silence the wonderful melody of "Taps," the last farewell, was
played for the dying year. Then Anita, as the commanding officer's
daughter, had the honor of turning off the lights. To-night she looked
her sweetest, wearing a little white dancing gown that showed her
satin-slippered feet. With Broussard escorting her, Anita walked the
length of the long ballroom to the point where, with one touch of the
hand every light went out in an instant of time, and the ballroom was
plunged into the blackness of darkness and the stillness of silence.

The band then played softly the delicious waltz "Auf Wiedersehen," with
its sweet promise of eternal meeting.

On the stroke of twelve came a great roar and reverberance from the
outside and a dazzling flash of light blazed in at the window from a
_feu de joie_ on the plaza. At the same moment, the young bugler
played the splendid fanfare that welcomes the dawn, the reveille.
Broussard and Anita, looking into each others' smiling eyes, began the
new year of their perfect happiness with the joyous echo of the silver
trumpet proclaiming the coming of the sunrise.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BETTY AT FORT BLIZZARD***

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