ed down from the
blue-veined brow to the bit of white throat visible, where a gauzy piece
of neck wear had been loosened. Evidently, this was the statuary
described by the whiskered youth. But the statuary breathed. A bloom of
living apple-blossoms was on the cheeks. The brows were black and
arched. The very pose of the head was arch, and in the lips was a
suggestion of archery, too,--Cupid's archery, though the upper lip was
drawn almost too tight for the bow beneath to discharge the little god's
shaft. Why did I do it? I do not know. Ask the young Nor'-Wester, who
had worn a path beneath the selfsame window that very day, or the hosts
of young men, who are still wearing paths beneath windows to this very
day. I coughed and sat bolt upright on the bench with unnecessarily loud
intimations of my presence. The fringe of black lashes did not even
lift. I rose and with great show of indifference paraded solemnly five
times past that window; but, in spite of my pompous indifference, by a
sort of side-signalling, I learned that the owner of the heavy lashes
was unaware of my existence. Thereupon, I sat down again. It _was_ a bit
of statuary and a very pretty bit of statuary. As the youth said, there
was no law against looking at a bit of statuary in this wilderness, and
as the statuary did not know I was looking at it, I sat back to take my
fill of that vision framed in the open window. The statuary, unknown to
itself, had full meed of revenge; for it presently brought such a flood
of longing to my heart, longings, not for this face, but for what this
face represented--the innocence and love and purity of home, that I
bowed dejectedly forward with moist eyes gazing at the ground.

"Hullo!" whispered a deep voice in my ear. "Are you mooning after the
Little Statue already?"

When I looked up, the man had passed, but the head in the window was
leaning out and a pair of swimming, lustrous, gray eyes were gazing
forward in a way that made me dizzy. "Ah," they said in a language that
needed no speaking, "there are two of us, very, very home-sick."

"The guiding star for my moral compass," said I, under my breath.

Then the statue in a live fashion suddenly drew back into the dark room.
The window-shutter flung to, with a bang, and my vision was gone. I left
the bench, made a shake-down on one of the store counters, and knew
nothing more till the noise of brigades from the far north aroused the
fort at an early hour Monday morn