woman so fashioned in thy image! She followed me, and laid her hand upon my arm tenderly, while I shook with emotion.
"Captain," said she, in that sweet voice, "captain, what have I done?"
It was the first day of the Indian summer, a memorable season that year, when, according to an old legend, the Great Father sits idly on the mountain-tops and blows the smoke of his long pipe into the valleys. In a moment I was quite calm, and stood looking off to the hazy hollows of the far field. I gave her my arm without speaking, and we walked slowly down a garden path. For a time neither broke the silence.
"I did not know—I did not know," she whispered presently.
"And I—must—tell you," I said brokenly, "that I—that I—"
"Hush-sh-sh!" she whispered, her hand over my lips. "Say no more! say no more! If it is true, go—go quickly, I beg of you!"
There was such a note of pleading in her voice, I hear it, after all this long time, in the
