lly.

Two of the children, seeing her on the lawn, break from their nurse,
who is sleeping the sleep of the just, with her broad back against an
elm, and running to Molly, fling their arms around her. She rewards
them with a kiss apiece, one of which Luttrell surreptitiously purloins
from the prettiest.

"Oh, you have come back, Molly. And where have you been?"

"Over the hills and far away."

"_Very_ far away? But you brought her back again," nodding a
golden head gravely at Luttrell; "and nurse said you wouldn't. She said
all soldiers were wicked, and that some day you would steal our Molly.
But you won't," coaxingly: "will you, now?"

Luttrell and Molly laugh and redden a little.

"I doubt if I would be able," he says, without raising his eyes from
the child's face.

"I don't think you are a soldier at all," declares the darker maiden,
coming more boldly to the front, as though fortified by this assertion.
"You have no sword; and there never was a soldier without a sword, was
there?"

"I begin to feel distinctly ashamed of myself," says Luttrell. "I
_have_ a sword, Daisy, somewhere. But not here. The next time I
come I will bring it with me for your special delectation."

"Did you ever cut off any one's head?" asks the timid, fair-haired
Renee, in the background, moving a few steps nearer to him, with rising
hope in her voice.

"Miss Massereene, if you allow this searching examination to go on, I
shall sink into the ground," says Luttrell. "I feel as if the eyes of
Europe were upon me. Why cannot I boast that I have sent a thousand
blacks to glory? No, Renee, with shame I confess it, I am innocent of
bloodshed."

"I am so glad!" says the darker Daisy, while the gentler looking child
turns from him with open disappointment.

"Do you think you can manage to amuse yourself for a little while?"
says Molly. "Because I must leave you; I promised Letty to see after
some of her housekeeping for her: I won't be too long," with a view to
saving him from despair.

"I will see what a cigar can do for me," replies he, mournfully. "But
remember how heavily time drags--sometimes."

Kissing her hand to him gayly, she trips away over the grass, leaving
him to the tender mercies of the children. They, with all the frightful
energy of youth, devote themselves to his service, and, seizing on him,
carry him off to their especial sanctum, where they detain him in
durance vile until the welcome though stentorian lungs of