e they knew. All
they wanted was to be together, and alone. But the bride was tired by a
long day in the train; her smiles began presently to flag, and by nine
o'clock her husband had insisted on sending her to rest.

After escorting her upstairs Captain Boyson returned to the veranda,
which was brightly lit up, in order to read some letters that were still
unopened in his pocket. But before he began upon them he was seized once
more by the wizardry of the scene. Was that indistinct glimmer in the
far distance--that intenser white on white--the eternal cloud of spray
that hangs over the Canadian Fall? If so, the fog was indeed yielding,
and the full moon behind it would triumph before long. On the other
hand, he could no longer see the lights of the bridge at all; the
rolling vapour choked the gorge, and the waiter who brought him his
coffee drily prophesied that there would not be much change under
twenty-four hours.

He fell back upon his letters, well pleased to see that one among them
came from Herbert French, with whom the American officer had maintained
a warm friendship since the day of a certain consultation in French's
East-End library. The letter was primarily one of congratulation,
written with all French's charm and sympathy; but over the last pages of
it Boyson's face darkened, for they contained a deplorable account of
the man whom he and French had tried to save.

The concluding passage of the letter ran as follows:

"You will scarcely wonder after all this that we see him very
seldom, and that he no longer gives us his confidence. Yet both
Elsie and I feel that he cares for us as much as ever. And, indeed,
poor fellow, he himself remains strangely lovable, in spite of what
one must--alas!--believe as to his ways of life and the people with
whom he associates. There is in him, always, something of what
Meyers called 'the imperishable child.' That a man who might have
been so easily led to good has been so fatally thrust into evil is
one of the abiding sorrows of my life. How can I reproach him for
his behaviour? As the law stands, he can never marry; he can never
have legitimate children. Under the wrong he has suffered, and, no
doubt, in consequence of that illness in New York, when he was
badly nursed and cared for--from which, in fact, he has never
wholly recovered--his will-power and nerve, which were never very
strong, hav