His voice sounded very forlorn, and Sarah felt remorseful.  After all, Peter was her comrade and her oldest friend, as well as her lover.  At the very bottom of her heart there lurked a remnant of her childish admiration for him, which would, perhaps, never quite be extinguished.  The boy who got into scrapes, and was thrashed by his father, and who did not mind; the boy who vaulted over fences she had to climb or creep through; who went fishing, and threw a fly with so light and sure a hand, and filled his basket, whilst she wound her line about her skirts, and caught her hook, and whipped the stream in vain.  He had climbed a tall fir-tree once, and brought down in safety a weeping, shame-stricken little girl with a red pigtail, whose daring had suddenly failed her; and he had gone up the tree himself like a squirrel afterwards, and fetched her the nest she coveted.  Nor did he ever taunt her with her cowardice nor revert to his own exploit; but this was because Peter forgot the whole adventure in an hour, though Sarah remembered it to the end of her life.  He climbed so many trees, and went birds’-nesting every spring to his mother’s despair.

Sarah thought of him wandering all the afternoon in his own woods, lonely and mortified, listening to the popping of the guns on the opposite side of the hill, which echoed through the valley; she knew what those sounds meant to Peter—­the boy who had shot so straight and true, and who would never shoulder a gun any more.

“I don’t see why you should be so miserable,” she said, as lightly as she could; but there were tears in her eyes, she was so sorry for Peter.

“I dare say you don’t,” said Peter, bitterly.  “Nobody has ever made a fool of you, no doubt.  A wretched, self-confident fool, who gave you his whole heart to trample in the dust.  I suppose I ought to have known you were only—­playing with me—­as you said—­a wretched object as I am now, but—­”

“An object!” cried Sarah, so anxious to stem the tide of his reproaches that she scarce knew what she was saying, “which appeals to the soft side of every woman’s heart, high or low, rich or poor, civilized or savage—­a wounded soldier.”

“Do you think I want to be pitied?” said Peter, glowering.

“Pitied!” said Sarah, softly.  “Do you call this pity?” She leant forward and kissed his empty sleeve.

Peter trembled at her touch.

“It is—­because you are sorry for me,” he said hoarsely.

“Sorry!” said Sarah, scornfully; “I glory in it.”  Then she suddenly began to cry.  “I am a wicked girl,” she sobbed, “and you were a fool, if you ever thought I could be happy anywhere but in this stupid old valley, or with—­with any one but you.  And I am rightly punished if my—­my behaviour has made you change your mind.  Because I did mean, just at first, to throw you over, and to—­to go away from you, Peter.  But—­but the arm that wasn’t there—­held me fast.”