f grace and repeated:

"I wore the uniform!"

"Yes," she said, with fine scorn, "wore it in our garden, where you
were safe!"

"Arrah! Was I now?" he asked in his best brogue. "Well, it's myself
thought I was anything but safe for a few minutes. But I saved the
papers, and your brother was good enough to say I'd saved his honor."

"You!"

"Just me, and no other," he affirmed. "Didn't I hold on to those
instructions while that Yankee spy was trying to send me to--heaven?
And if that was not helping the cause and risking my life, well now,
what would you call it?"

"Oh!" gasped Evilena, delightedly, "I never thought of that. Why, you
were a real hero after all. I'm so glad, I--"

Then realizing that her exuberance was little short of caressing, and
that she actually had both hands on his arm, she drew back and added
demurely that she would always keep those roses, and she would like to
keep the guitar, too, just as it was, for her mama agreed that it was
a real romance of a serenade--the serenade that was not sung.

After which, he assured her, the serenades under her window should not
always be silent ones, and they went in search of the broken guitar.

Judge Clarkson was pacing the veranda with well concealed impatience.
Colonel McVeigh's ride had interfered with the business talk he had
planned. Matthew Loring was decidedly irritable over it, and he,
Clarkson, was the one who, with Gertrude, had to hear the complaints.
But looking in Kenneth's happy face he could not begrudge him those
brief morning hours at Beauty's side, and only asked his consideration
for the papers at the earliest convenient moment, and at the same time
asked if the cottage was really a safe place for so important a
prisoner as Monroe.

"Perfectly safe," decided McVeigh, "so safe that there is no danger of
escape; and as I think over the whole affair I doubt if on trial
anything in this world can save him."

"Well, I should hate to take his chances in the next," declared the
Judge; "it seems so incredible that a man possessed of the courage,
the admirable attributes you have always ascribed to him, should prove
so unworthy--a broken parole. Why, sir, it is--is damnable, sir,
damnable!"

Colonel McVeigh agreed, and Clarkson left the room without perceiving
that Madame Caron had been a listener, but she came in, removing her
gloves and looking at the tiny band of gold on her third finger.

"The Judge referred to Captain Monroe, did