early a week since I have tasted meat."

"I--I--brought a few things with me," continued the girl, with a
certain hesitating timidity. She reached down, and produced a basket
from the shadow of the wall. "These chickens"--she held up a pair of
pullets--"the commander-in-chief himself could not buy: I kept them for
MY commander! And this pot of marmalade, which I know my Allan loves,
is the same I put up last summer. I thought [very tenderly] you might
like a piece of that bacon you liked so once, dear. Ah, sweetheart,
shall we ever sit down to our little board? Shall we ever see the end
of this awful war? Don't you think, dear [very pleadingly], it would
be best to give it up? King George is not such a very bad man, is he?
I've thought, sweetheart [very confidently], that mayhap you and he
might make it all up without the aid of those Washingtons, who do
nothing but starve one to death. And if the king only knew you,
Allan,--should see you as I do, sweetheart,--he'd do just as you say."

During this speech she handed him the several articles alluded to; and
he received them, storing them away in such receptacles of his clothing
as were convenient--with this notable difference, that with HER the act
was graceful and picturesque: with him there was a ludicrousness of
suggestion that his broad shoulders and uniform only heightened.

"I think not of myself, lass," he said, putting the eggs in his pocket,
and buttoning the chickens within his martial breast. "I think not of
myself, and perhaps I often spare that counsel which is but little
heeded. But I have a duty to my men--to Connecticut. [He here tied the
marmalade up in his handkerchief.] I confess I have sometimes thought
I might, under provocation, be driven to extreme measures for the good
of the cause. I make no pretence to leadership, but--"

"With you at the head of the army," broke in Thankful enthusiastically,
"peace would be declared within a fortnight."

There is no flattery, however outrageous, that a man will not accept
from the woman whom he believes loves him. He will perhaps doubt its
influence in the colder judgment of mankind; but he will consider that
this poor creature, at least, understands him, and in some vague way
represents the eternal but unrecognized verities. And when this is
voiced by lips that are young and warm and red, it is somehow quite as
convincing as the bloodless, remoter utterance of posterity.

Wherefore the troop