orld without. And now the citadel was stormed and she was
conquered and captive.

Meanwhile, the handsome officer walked over the sunny lawn with his
military step, well set up, lordly, smiling. He liked to see this
bashfulness in Leam. It was the sign of submission in one so unsubdued
that flattered his pride as men like it to be flattered. Now indeed he
was the man and the superior, and this trembling little girl, blushing
and downcast, was no longer his virgin nymph, self-contained and
unconfessed, but the slave of his love, like so many others before
her.

The child ran up to him joyfully. She and Edgar were "great friends,"
as he used to say. He lifted her in his arms, placed her on his
shoulder like a big blue forget-me-not gathered from the grass, then
deposited her by Leam on the seat beneath the cut-leaved hornbeam.
And Leam was grateful that the little one was there. It was somehow a
protection against herself.

"I came to take you to the castle," said; Edgar, looking down on the
drooping figure with a tender smile on his handsome face as he took
her hand in his; and held it. "Are you ready?"

Leam's lips moved, but at the first inaudibly. "No," she then said
with an effort.

"It is time," said Edgar, still holding her hand.

"I do not think I shall go," she faltered, not raising her eyes from
the ground.

Edgar, towering above her, always smiling--the child playing with his
beard as she stood on the seat breast-high with himself--still holding
that small burning hand in his, Leam not resisting, then said in
Spanish, "My soul! have pity on me."

The old familiar words thrilled the girl like a voice from the dead.
Had anything been wanting to rivet the chains in which love had
bound her, it was these words, "My soul," spoken by her lover in her
mother's tongue. She answered more freely, almost eagerly, in the same
language, "Would you be sorry?" and Edgar, whose Castilian was by no
means unlimited, replied in English "Yes" at a venture, and sat down
on the seat by her.

"Fina, go and ask Jones to tell you pretty stories about the bay," he
then said to the child.

"And may I ride him?" cried Fina, sure to take the ell when given the
inch.

"Ask Jones," he answered good-naturedly "I dare say he will put you
up."

Whereupon Fina ran off to the groom, whom she teased for the next half
hour to give her a ride on the bay.

But Jones was obdurate. The major's horse was not only three sticks
and a b