against him. He had been remiss in pay- | ing his visits there, and a slight coolness had followed in consequence. But he had never doubted for a moment that it was in his power to place himself upon the old footing if he chose to do so, and some such desire awoke within him now. He was very much in love. He did not by any means repent of the step he had taken; it was for Blossom's sake that he desired to renew his friendship with the major's family, in order that these, his oldest friends at the post, might rejoice with him in his happiness. The wedding was to be a most quiet affair. It could not be otherwise, since Blossom had no friends to invite, and Captain Elyot's would hardly have come for the asking.

A few nights before the event he dropped in at the major's. He was most graciously received. Nothing could be more affable than Miss Claudia's manner.

"And how are you to-night, Captain Elyot?" The major's wife rose with some difficulty. She was quite stout and by no means so agile as she had been once, but she gave him both her hands. "How kind of you to look in on us in the storm," for the rain fell heavily outside.

Claudia offered him but one hand, but the polite smile that went with it made it as good as two.

"There seems to be an end to the winter at last," the major's wife went on. "Still the air is raw and chill; draw your chair closer to the fire, and let me call Jinny to bring more wood," and Mrs. Bryce bustled up with a fine show of hospitable feeling, and slipped out of the room under this pretext. How did she know that the captain had not a word to say to Claudia? What if he had repented after all? Though this could hardly be, since the chaplain's wife had told her that the services of her husband had been engaged for Friday, which was only two days away. To think of their choosing a Friday! And the major's wife, who had not been to call Jinny at all, but stood shivering with cold in the little passage leading to the kitchen, set her wits to work to determine what catastrophe was most likely to follow such a disregard of the oracles. No; it was hardly possible that he had come to say he repented, though she remembered a cavalry captain upon the South Platte who had changed his mind at the last moment, when the chaplain stood waiting in the next room with his book in his hand. But something had come to light in regard to the girl, and Mrs. Bryce

thought, with an unconscious sigh, that it was not at all probable that anything would come to light in regard to Blossom. Nothing could be said against her so far as she knew, in spite of her officious warning to Mrs. Stubbs. But this only made it the worse. And this girl, sitting passive and meek, had gathered in her harvest, while she -Mrs. Bryce-had striven and toiled, and almost prayed, and had reaped nothing at all. The major's wife wiped a tear from the corner of her eye, and then went off in search of Jinny and the fire-wood.

"Come, come, Jinny," she called in a loud, cheerful voice upon her return, when her hand was on the latch of the parlor door. After all there was a chance that something had been said in her absence.

But any hope which she had nursed in that little, cold, dark passage died within her when she entered the room. She might as well have staid and made herself comfortable, for nothing had come of her going away, she saw at once. Claudia and her visitor sat as she had left them on either side of the deadened fire; Claudia's voice rang out gayly as she opened the door, but the mother knew that the girl had pulled at the rope with an effort to make it do so.

The conversation had been of the most commonplace order.

"I suppose you are inconsolable without your friend. What a bright little thing she is!" the captain had said. And Miss Claudia replied that she was, indeed, quite desolate without Kitty, who had set off for the states a few days before, and who was, to be sure, a very "bright little thing." Oh, was she not ? "and deep and sly," she thought in her heart. But she was entirely too conscious of her limitations to be quite at

ease.

To the past she could not refer, to the future she would not,—at least to any future in which Captain Elyot had an interest,-and the present time at the dull little fort afforded but few topics of interest.

"I shall not have a penny to my purse," she said at last with a laugh, "if the new sutler continues as he has begun. I cannot pass the door, mamma knows ;" and Mrs. Bryce shook her head with a mock sigh which might have been real, since she did know to her sorrow. "They are such artful creatures, these trading-people," Claudia went on with an air of innocence. "They discover their victims at once. My purse, before he had been here a week, was entirely at the mercy of this Blibbins, Blifkins or whatever he is called."

I am afraid this was a little sword-prac- | tice in Claudia, and that she was trying to see how nearly she could approach the Captain without making him wince. And he did wince, though he tried to stand up manfully before her.

"I suppose they are a good deal like other people," he said, but he was ill at ease, and she saw it and rejoiced.

"Perhaps so;" she shrugged her shoulders with a grimace, as though this were a question in natural history she did not care to pursue. “I brought home a roll of music last night to try. There was such pretty song;-" and she leaned back in her chair and picked up her guitar from the floor and the corner behind her. She laid it across her knee and turned the keys and tried its tone with fingers very slim and white pressing the strings. The song was a simple thing-something of love and constancy set to a minor key which makes the love seem always stronger and the constancy more abiding. It touched the heart of Captain Elyot, though he forgot the singer. He listened with a rapt face and eyes into which the tears started. It was a very pretty and effective move on Claudia's part and much like a play, where the heroine goes off at last to tender and appropriate music. Only that the dying heroine does not usually play her own accompaniment.

Perhaps Claudia realized that she was to pass out of the young man's life with this night and this little song, for she threw into it a strength of expression rare to her and almost too great for the shallow words to carry. The major's wife moved out from the glare of the fire-light and wiped her eyes slyly as Claudia, her face thrown back and softly flushed, almost to beauty, sang:

"Tender and true, adieu, adieu."

The poor little song had many tongues. It said one thing to Claudia and quite another to Captain Elyot and even found a voice in Mrs. Bryce's heart. When it was over, the hush that speaks louder than bells fell on the three. Then after a moment Captain Elyot rose to go.

"Thanks," he said simply to Claudia, but the glow on his face and the deep light in his eyes said more than words. Then he turned to the major's wife: "I believe it is no secret that I am to be married on Friday," he went on in a slightly embarrassed If you and the major would come

voice. 66

round at noon, I should be very glad. You will meet no one but the parties most interested," he added with a blush and a laugh. "And Miss Claudia, too. Pardon the awkwardness of the invitation. It has with me the disadvantage of novelty. I met the major on my way here and he was so good as to say he would look in." He did not say where. He could not bring himself to utter Mrs. Stubbs's name. Claudia's sword practice had been even better than she knew.

Mrs. Bryce glanced quickly at her daughter, whose face showed nothing at all. She stood with her hands crossed and resting upon her guitar, her eyes gazing quietly into the fire, almost as though she had not heard him.

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"I have asked no one but you," he said. "I could not forget," he broke out impulsively, "that you were my first friends here." The quiet home-like air of the room, the little song, had touched a spring in memory; all the time between dropped away. They had been his good, true friends whom he had neglected, a little, of late.

The woman's heart yearned over the handsome young fellow, towering above her, who had grasped her hand as he spoke. Oh, how she would have rejoiced in him, had he chosen a wife here instead of among those low people. But he could be nothing to her now.

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I always try to be a friend to the young men-if they will give me an opportunity," she said. The words chilled him though they were uttered kindly enough. "And I shall be happy to be present at your marriage, of course. I am sure it was very kind in you to remember us and I hope you may never repent the step you are about to take." There was something in the tone of her voice which seemed to imply that he might repent it. She had not intended it, but the last moment had dragged the truth to the surface.

"Good-bye;" and Claudia gave him her hand. It was very cold. "And you will come?" It was hard if his friends would not rejoice with him. But Miss Bryce did not seem to have heard the question, put with much less assurance than he had used at first. A chill like that in the air outside was creeping over him.

"Good-bye," she said with the same placid smile.

Could he urge it further? And what did he care for them all, or what were they to him compared with the dear little girl

So with a proud heart the mother followed them to their new home. She would be a slave if need be to the man who had done so much for Blossom. She would be content to keep in the background unknown and unnoticed, or even to go away by herself at the last when Blossom had reached the height of her grandeur, and to gaze upon it, and her, humbly, from a distance. "I'd come to her may be sometimes, just t' look at her, just t' touch her. I'd say I was the woman as nursed her; an' nobody 'd know, none o' the grand folks ud believe that I was the mother that bore her." She planned it all out artfully, happy in Blossom's happiness; but with that restless joy which still seeks something beyond. They wont be staying here long," she said to Tolee, her servant and slave. "Your new master' ll soon be leaving this place to go and live among his grand friends." And Tolee stared stupidly; but gathered enough meaning from the words to spread the saying about the garrison where it only added to the scorn with which Mrs. Stubbs's pretensions were looked upon. Not that Mrs. Stubbs had any knowledge as to the intentions of the captain. A sudden awe of the young man had fallen upon her, since he had stooped to raise her to his level. She did not dream of intruding upon his affairs or of asking his plans for the future. It was enough that Blossom was to share that future. She was content to rely upon the stories which had passed without denial through the little community at the fort. And these, however varied they might be in minor particulars all united in one grand truth, as she believed, which was that when some relative in the east should die Captain Elyot would leave the army and live "like a lord." But what this relative was to him, in what part of the states he resided or how near he was to the final move which was to do so much for Blossom, she had no knowledge. The last query troubled her. What if he were to live on for years? -till she herself had passed away without seeing Blossom's glory. Or, worse than this, even, what if-in the fickle fortune of a soldier's life-Captain Elyot should be cut off before this end was reached? Oh! she could not be cheated out of this now! It had come to seem her right.

While these fresh anxieties were pricking Mrs. Stubbs with a thousand points Captain Elyot had made up his mind to meet the worst that could befall him and had written to his uncle of his marriage.

"Did I ever speak to you of my uncle?" he asked of Blossom. "Uncle Jeremy, off in the states, who has been a father to me?" "Oh, how I shall love him!" Blossom exclaimed, tenderly and quickly.

Captain Elyot winced. He was very much afraid that she would never have the opportunity. He did not pursue the subject; nor did he relate the story in regard to the cousin on the Jersey shore, though that had been upon his tongue. He would have hesitated and appeared foolish enough in his own eyes, in showing to his wife that another girl (as he believed) had stood with parted lips ready to say yes to his suit. She would not have doubted it. If he had described the entire Jersey shore as lined with damsels weeping and wringing their hands on his account she would have been quite ready to believe it.

He wrote his letter. He made a list of Blossom's charms and virtues with the fond imbecility of a lover, wiping it out effectually at last by avowing that she was the daughter of the former post-sutler. When this word was written he felt that all was over between Uncle Jeremy and himself. The old man was simple enough in his tastes and plain to homeliness in his ways, but he was an aristocrat at heart. He would be angry that his nephew had not sought the wife he had selected for him; but he would be furious over the choice he had made for himself.

As the young man folded and sealed the letter he thought of the old house in an eastern city where he had spent his idle days for many years now, the one place in the world that was home to him and where he had fancied he should end his life when he was tired of campaigning and roughing it about the world. Every part of the old place was familiar and dear to him, yet it never would be his, now, he knew. It was not the palace which Mrs. Stubbs's fancy had evoked from her dreams. She would have turned from it in disdain, but it was very pleasant and dear to the young man. He could not resign it without a sigh. Yet Blossom was better than all this to him. He would not have given one day of happiness with her for the old house and all the friends he had left in that eastern city.

"Why do you sigh?" asked Blossom as he laid his pen down and leaned back in his chair.

"It has been a tiresome letter to write," he answered evasively. He almost regretted that he had mentioned his uncle to her. Her tender heart should never be pained by

the knowledge that this letter had been a plea in her behalf.

Blossom had been married some weeks when one morning her mother appeared in the door-way of her sitting-room.

"Come in, come in," Blossom called out, springing up and scattering the bright colored wools she was sorting in her lap. "You never sit with me in these days, though you should have nothing else to do." She pulled forward her arm-chair and placed her mother in it.

"There's so much to be seen to," the woman said uneasily: "Tolee grows worse and worse. I'm thinking we'll have to get

rid of her some day."

"Any time you think best; it is as you say, you know," Blossom answered affectionately. "Or why not have some one to assist her? It is too much for you. You promised to be a lady when we came here," she added playfully.

But there was no answering smile on Mrs. Stubbs's face.

"I never could be that," she said quietly. It was the one subject upon which she had pondered deep and long and had made up her mind. "It's for you to be that. You were born to it. The like o' me's fit only for rough places. But you're a lady born."

And so she was. It seemed as though some drops of gentle blood, filtered through a common enough ancestry, had come down to the girl and made her what she was-a being of a different order from the mother who bore her. It showed itself in her pretty soft hands whiter than milk, in the turn of the head upon which she had coiffured her hair, -in a fruitless effort after matronly dignitypinning up and smoothing out the curls like a child playing at womanhood.

"But may be we'd best not make a change," the woman went on with affected carelessness, yet watching Blossom with crafty half-shut eyes; "it'll only be for a little while."

The young mistress of the house had flown to the window as a horse galloped by. Its rider had doffed his hat and thrown a kiss from the tips of his fingers. The sun shone in warm and bright across the broad river, beyond whose sandy sweep of level edge lay the rolling prairies already growing green. Love was a lens through which even this landscape, barren of beauty, had gained a charm. She had no desire or longing beyond.

"What will be for a little while ?" she asked absently, still following with her eyes

the handsome, bold rider who had not yet passed out of sight.

"That you'll be staying here. You an' the cap'n'll be movin' off t' the states some day." "Oh, perhaps so; when he is ordered away from here. But that will not be for a long time yet," Blossom replied turning from the window. The rider had disappeared at last and the scene had lost its charm. She came back and sat down among the bright wools, passing them idly through her hands and prattling like a child. "When we do go I shall see Aunt Julia and all the girls again. I wonder if they will think me changed. They used to call me Baby Blossom. It was only a pet name, you know. They would not think of calling me that now," she added with dignity.

"You'd never be wasting your time on such as them," the mother broke in contemptuously. "He'd have his fine friends

to go to." "And have I no fine friends?" repeated Blossom with a happy laugh. "But I am to visit them. He promised me."

The woman disdained to argue over so trifling a matter. A man's promises were easily made and broken, she thought.

"He hears from 'em, I'll be bound," she ventured after a moment.

"From his friends? Oh yes, and writes to them, too. It was only the last mail that he sent a long letter to his uncle," Blossom ran on, innocently voluble.

"To his uncle?" The woman was alert at once. This must be the information she was seeking.

"Yes," Blossom assented slowly, laying a skein of pale corn-color beside a violet and turning her head upon one side to watch the effect. "The uncle who has been like a father to him." It was the one item of knowledge that she possessed in regard to her husband's relatives, concerning whom she felt no curiosity, being quite happy and at rest; but she delivered it as though it had been a volume.

"And he's old and like to die?" "I don't know." Blossom opened her eyes in surprise.

"Yes; and when he dies-I've heard 'em talk it over at the store-the cap'n 'll go an' set himself up in his place."

"But we don't wish him to die," said Blossom. She was shocked at the cool indifference with which the old man was to be set one side to make room for her.-" If he is a dear old man."