ly lifted herself over the
black range of the Orange hills, and looked at him, blushing a little,
as if the appointment were her own.

The face and figure thus illuminated were those of a strongly built,
handsome man of thirty, so soldierly in bearing that it needed not the
buff epaulets and facings to show his captain's rank in the Continental
army. Yet there was something in his facial expression that
contradicted the manliness of his presence,--an irritation and
querulousness that were inconsistent with his size and strength. This
fretfulness increased as the moments went by without sign or motion in
the faintly lit field beyond, until, in peevish exasperation, he began
to kick the nearer stones against the wall.

"Moo-oo-w!"

The soldier started. Not that he was frightened, nor that he had
failed to recognize in these prolonged syllables the deep-chested,
half-drowsy low of a cow, but that it was so near him--evidently just
beside the wall. If an object so bulky could have approached him so
near without his knowledge, might not she--

"Moo-oo!"

He drew nearer the wall cautiously. "So, Cushy! Mooly! Come up,
Bossy!" he said persuasively. "Moo"--but here the low unexpectedly
broke down, and ended in a very human and rather musical little laugh.

"Thankful!" exclaimed the soldier, echoing the laugh a trifle uneasily
and affectedly as a hooded little head arose above the wall.

"Well," replied the figure, supporting a prettily rounded chin on her
hands, as she laid her elbows complacently on the wall,--"well, what
did you expect? Did you want me to stand here all night, while you
skulked moonstruck under a tree? Or did you look for me to call you by
name? did you expect me to shout out, 'Capt. Allan Brewster--'"

"Thankful, hush!"

"Capt. Allan Brewster of the Connecticut Contingent," continued the
girl, with an affected raising of a low, pathetic voice that was,
however, inaudible beyond the tree. "Capt. Brewster, behold me,--your
obleeged and humble servant and sweetheart to command."

Capt. Brewster succeeded, after a slight skirmish at the wall, in
possessing himself of the girl's hand; at which; although still
struggling, she relented slightly.

"It isn't every lad that I'd low for," she said, with an affected pout,
"and there may be others that would not take it amiss; though there be
fine ladies enough at the assembly halls at Morristown as might think
it hoydenish?"

"Nonsense, love,"