ve of buckskin, I
rubbed the dust from the gilded plate set in the lower frame.

"The Maid-at-Arms," I read aloud.

Then there came to me, at first like the far ring of a voice scarcely
heard through southern winds, the faint echo of a legend told me ere my
mother died--perhaps told me by her in those drifting hours of a
childhood nigh forgotten. Yet I seemed to see white, sun-drenched sands
and the long, blue swell of a summer sea, and I heard winds in the
palms, and a song--truly it was my mother's; I knew it now--and, of a
sudden, the words came borne on a whisper of ancient melody:

"This for the deed she did at Ashby Farms,
Helen of Ormond, Royal Maid-at-Arms!"

Memory was stirring at last, and the gray legend grew from the past, how
a maid, Helen of Ormond, for love of her cousin, held prisoner in his
own house at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, sheared off her hair, clothed her limbs
in steel, and rode away to seek him; and how she came to the house at
Ashby and rode straight into the gateway, forcing her horse to the great
hall where her lover lay, and flung him, all in chains, across her
saddle-bow, riding like a demon to freedom through the Desmonds, his
enemies. Ah! now my throat was aching with the memory of the song, and
of that strange line I never understood--"Wearing the ghost-ring!"--and,
of themselves, the words grew and died, formed on my silent lips:

"This for the deed she did at Ashby Farms,
Helen of Ormond, Royal Maid-at-Arms!

"Though for all time the lords of Ormond be
Butlers to Majesty,
Yet shall new honors fall upon her
Who, armored, rode for love to Ashby Farms;
Let this her title be: A Maid-at-Arms!

"Serene mid love's alarms,
For all time shall the Maids-at-Arms,
Wearing the ghost-ring, triumph with their constancy.
And sweetly conquer with a sigh
And vanquish with a tear
Captains a trembling world might fear.

"This for the deed she did at Ashby Farms,
Helen of Ormond, Royal Maid-at-Arms!"

Staring at the picture, lips quivering with the soundless words, such
wretched loneliness came over me that a dryness in my throat set me
gulping, and I groped my way back to the settle by the fireplace and sat
down heavily in homesick solitude.

[Illustration: "I SAT DOWN HEAVILY IN HOMESICK SOLITUDE".]

Then hate came, a quick hatred for these Northern skies, and these
strangers of the North who dared claim kin w