ck in the hall, and up this he sees the doctor
slowly laboring. He longs to go to his assistance, but stands
irresolute, fearing to offend. The old gentleman nears the top, and is
almost on the landing above, when a door is suddenly opened, a light,
quick step is heard, and in an instant a tall, graceful girl, clad in
deep black--a girl whom the colonel sees is young, beautiful, and very
pale--springs forward into view, places her hands on the old man's
shoulders, and looks eagerly, imploringly, into his face. What she asks,
what she says, the colonel cannot hear; but another moment solves all
doubt as to his proper course. He sees her clasped to the doctor's
breast; he sees them clinging to each other one instant, and then the
father, with sudden rally, bears her pale and probably fainting from his
sight. A door shuts with muffled slam, and they are gone; and with the
intuition of a gentleman Colonel Putnam realizes why his proffer of
services would now be out of place.

"And so there is a woman in the case, after all," he thinks to himself
as he steps forth into the cool evening air. "And it is for her sake
the good old man shrinks from dragging the matter into the light of
day--his daughter, probably; and some scoundrel has been at work, and in
my regiment."

The colonel grinds his teeth and clinches his fists at this reflection.
He is a husband and father himself, and now he understands some features
in the old doctor's trouble which had puzzled him before. He strolls
across the street to the sidewalk under the quaint old red-brick,
dormer-windowed houses where lights are still gleaming, and where groups
of people are chatting and laughing in the pleasant air. Many of them
are in the rough uniform of the army--teamsters, drivers, and slightly
wounded soldiers out on pass from the neighboring field hospitals. The
old cabriolet is being trundled off to some neighboring stable after a
brief confabulation between the driver thereof and the landlord of the
tavern, and the colonel is about hailing and tendering the Jehu another
job for the morrow, when he sees that somebody else is before him; and,
bending down from his seat, the driver is talking with a man who has
come out from the shadow of a side porch. There is but little light in
the street, and the colonel has turned on reaching the curb, and is
seeking among the windows across the way for one which may possibly
prove to be the young lady's. He is interested in th