-petition, money,
ring, and all.

Another soldier told her the signatures were bogus. And that very night
she recognized him, spite of his beard, and at sight of her he had cut
and run. ("Well he might!" thought Stuyvesant.) And then Miss Perkins
yielded to the strain of overtaxed nerves and had to be conducted home.

She lived but a block or two away, and it was Stuyvesant who had to play
escort. The air, unluckily, revived her, and at the gateway she turned
and had this to add to her previous statements.

"You think the Ray people your friends, lieutenant, and I'm not the kind
of a woman to see a worthy young man trifled with. You've been going
there every day and everybody knows it, and knows that you were sent
away to Iloilo in hopes of breaking you of it. That girl's promised in
marriage to that young man who's got himself into such a scrape all on
her account. He's here--followed her here to marry her, and if he's
found he's liable to be shot. Oh, you can believe or not just as you
please, but never say I didn't try to give you fair warning. Know? Why,
I know much more about what's going on here than your generals do. _I_
have friends everywhere among the boys; _they_ haven't. Oh, very well,
if you won't listen!" (For Stuyvesant had turned away in wrath and
exasperation.) "But you'd be wiser if you heard me out. I've _seen_ Mr.
Foster and had the whole story from his lips. He's been there every day,
too, till he was taken sick----"

But Stuyvesant was out of the gate and at last out of hearing, and with
a vicious bang to the door, the lady of the P. D. A.'s, so recently
victimized by the astute Sackett, retired to the sanctity of her own
apartment, marvelling at the infatuation of men.

And yet, though Stuyvesant had angrily striven to silence the woman and
had left her in disgust, her words had not failed of certain weight.
Again he recalled with jealous pain the obvious indifference with which
his approaches had been received. True, no well-bred girl would be more
than conventionally civil to a stranger even under the exceptional
circumstances of their meeting on the train. True, she was cordial,
bright, winsome, and all that when at last he was formally presented;
but so she was to everybody. True, they had had many--at least _he_
had had many--delightful long interviews on the shaded deck of the
Sacramento; but though he would have eagerly welcomed a chance to
indulge in sentiment, never once did Marion e