e,
even provided it should be effected without interruption, bringing
with it at each moment recollections of the past was a horror not
to be endured; and he determined, by every means in his power, to
oppose the resolution of the commanding officer to the uttermost.
He was already under the ban of one threatened court-martial, and
it mattered little to him what steps Captain Headley might adopt
in regard to him for the future.

He had passed some moments in these reflections--fitful, varied,
and broken as those of a disconnected dream--when turning his eyes
again towards the gate where the sentinels had been posted, he saw
one of them bring his musket to the charge as if to prevent the
ingress of some one seeking admittance. Struck by the circumstance,
Ronayne hastened below, and as he advanced he saw the same sentinel
pick up a piece of paper, the superscription of which he was
endeavoring to examine. Before he had time to do this, however,
the officer had come up, and the sentinel promptly handed it to
him.

"Good God! what does this mean?" It was the handwriting of his
wife. Ronayne looked forward upon the common, and saw at about a
hundred yards before him, and retiring rapidly, the horseman whom
he had just before remarked. There was no necessity for asking any
questions. The whole thing explained itself.

"What can she have to say to me?" he mused to himself, as he broke
the bark string with which the note was tied; his competitor of
yesterday, too, the bearer! Hastily he unfolded it. It contained
these few words, hastily written in pencil on a leaf torn from her
memorandum book--"Go not to the council!" He examined the paper
closely--he could find no more.

The feelings of Ronayne, on reading these few words, traced by his
wife's well-remembered hand, may be comprehended. All the stubbornness
of his indifference was shaken; and sinking every consideration of
self he found a strange, wild pleasure in the knowledge that she
was free from personal restraint, and had power to command the
services of those whom she willed to do her bidding. What the
meaning of the caution was, in regard to the council, he could not
divine, neither wherefore it had been couched in such laconic terms;
but it was evident that, as the new wife of Wau-nan-gee, she had
obtained information of some danger of which they in the garrison
knew not, and that the recollection of those she had left behind
was not so weakened as to prevent h