."

"That is because you are so generous, dear."

"Perhaps it is," answered the boy.

This was two years before, when they were fourteen and fifteen years
old; at sixteen and seventeen they had advanced but little in their
ideas of life and of each other. Still, there was a slight change, for
Anne now hurried the braiding; it hurt her a little that Rast should
gaze so steadily at the rough, ugly hair.

When the Greek was finished they said good-by to the chaplain, and left
the cottage together. As they crossed the inner parade-ground, taking
the snow path which led toward the entrance grating, and which was kept
shovelled out by the soldiers, the snow walls on each side rising to
their chins, Rast suddenly exclaimed: "Oh, Annet, I have thought of
something! I am going to take you down the fort hill on a sled. Now you
need not object, because I shall do it in any case, although we _are_
grown up, and I _am_ going to college. Probably it will be the last
time. I shall borrow Bert Bryden's sled. Come along."

All the boy in him was awake; he seized Anne's wrist, and dragged her
through first one cross-path, then another, until at last they reached
the commandant's door. From the windows their heads had been visible,
turning and crossing above the heaped-up snow. "Rast, and Anne Douglas,"
said Mrs. Bryden, recognizing the girl's fur cap and the youth's golden
hair. She tapped on the window, and signed to them to enter without
ceremony. "What is it, Rast? Good-morning, Anne; what a color you have,
child!"

"Rast has been making me run," said Anne, smiling, and coming toward
the hearth, where the fort ladies were sitting together sewing, and
rather lugubriously recalling Christmas times in their old Eastern
homes.

"Throw off your cloak," said Mrs. Cromer, "else you will take cold when
you go out again."

"We shall only stay a moment," answered Anne.

The cloak was of strong dark blue woollen cloth, closely fitted to the
figure, with a small cape; it reached from her throat to her ankles, and
was met and completed by fur boots, fur gloves, and a little fur cap.
The rough plain costume was becoming to the vigorous girl. "It tones her
down," thought the lieutenant's wife; "she really looks quite well."

In the mean while Rast had gone across to the dining-room to find Bert
Bryden, the commandant's son, and borrow his sled.

"And you're really going to take Miss Douglas down the hill!" said the
boy. "Hurrah! I'll l