for
them frocks the Kernel's girls went cavortin' round Logport in last
Sunday--they looked like a cirkis."

"Like ez not the old Kernel gets it outer contracts--one way or
another. WE pay for it all the same," he added gloomily.

"Jest the same ez if they were MY clothes," said the girl, with a
quick, fiery, little laugh, "ain't it? Wonder how they'd like my
sayin' that to 'em when they was prancin' round, eh, Jim?"

But her companion was evidently unprepared for this sweeping feminine
deduction, and stopped it with masculine promptitude.

"Look yer--instead o' botherin' your head about what the Fort girls
wear, you'd better trot along a little more lively. It's late enough
now."

"But these darned boots hurt like pizen," said the girl, limping. "They
swallowed a lot o' water over the tops while I was wadin' down there,
and my feet go swashin' around like in a churn every step."

"Lean on me, baby," he returned, passing his arm around her waist, and
dropping her head smartly on his shoulder. "Thar!" The act was
brotherly and slightly contemptuous, but it was sufficient to at once
establish their kinship.

They continued on thus for some moments in silence, the girl, I fear,
after the fashion of her sex, taking the fullest advantage of this
slightly sentimental and caressing attitude. They were moving now
along the edge of the Marsh, parallel with the line of rapidly fading
horizon, following some trail only known to their keen youthful eyes.
It was growing darker and darker. The cries of the sea-birds had
ceased; even the call of a belated plover had died away inland; the
hush of death lay over the black funereal pall of marsh at their side.
The tide had run out with the day. Even the sea-breeze had lulled in
this dead slack-water of all nature, as if waiting outside the bar with
the ocean, the stars, and the night.

Suddenly the girl stopped and halted her companion. The faint far
sound of a bugle broke the silence, if the idea of interruption could
have been conveyed by the two or three exquisite vibrations that seemed
born of that silence itself, and to fade and die in it without break or
discord. Yet it was only the 'retreat' call from the Fort two miles
distant and invisible.

The young girl's face had become irradiated, and her small mouth half
opened as she listened. "Do you know, Jim," she said with a
confidential sigh, "I allus put words to that when I hear it--it's so
pow'ful pretty.