“So I hear,” replied the young officer soberly.  “It is horribly unlucky.”

“We start to-morrow,” added Coronado.

“To-morrow!” replied Thurstane, with a look of dismay.

“I hope you will be with us,” said Coronado.

“Everything goes wrong,” exclaimed the annoyed lieutenant.  “Here are some of my stores damaged, and I have had to ask for a board of survey.  I couldn’t possibly leave for two days yet, even if my recruits should arrive.”

“How very unfortunate!” groaned Coronado.  “My dear fellow, we had counted on you.”

“Lieutenant Thurstane, can’t you overtake us?” inquired Clara.

Thurstane wanted to kneel down and thank her, while Coronado wanted to throw something at her.

“I will try,” promised the officer, his fine, frank, manly face brightening with pleasure.  “If the thing can be done, it will be done.”

Coronado, while hoping that he would be ordered by the southern route, or that he would somehow break his neck, had the superfine brass to say, “Don’t fail us, Lieutenant.”

In spite of the managements of the Mexican to keep Clara and Thurstane apart, the latter succeeded in getting an aside with the young lady.

“So you take the northern trail?” he said, with a seriousness which gave his blue-black eyes an expression of almost painful pathos.  Those eyes were traitors; however discreet the rest of his face might be, they revealed his feelings; they were altogether too pathetic to be in the head of a man and an officer.

“But you will overtake us,” Clara replied, out of a charming faith that with men all things are possible.

“Yes,” he said, almost fiercely.

“Besides, Coronado knows,” she added, still trusting in the male being.  “He says this is the surest road.”

Thurstane did not believe it, but he did not want to alarm her when alarm was useless, and he made no comment.

“I have a great mind to resign,” he presently broke out.

Clara colored; she did not fully understand him, but she guessed that all this emotion was somehow on her account; and a surprised, warm Spanish heart beat at once its alarm.

“It would be of no use,” he immediately added.  “I couldn’t get away until my resignation had been accepted.  I must bear this as well as I can.”

The young lady began to like him better than ever before, and yet she began to draw gently away from him, frightened by a consciousness of her liking.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Van Diemen,” said Thurstane, in an inexplicable confusion.

“There is no need,” replied Clara, equally confused.

“Well,” he resumed, after a struggle to regain his self-control, “I will do my utmost to overtake you.”

“We shall be very glad,” returned Clara, with a singular mixture of consciousness and artlessness.

There was an exquisite innocence and almost childish simplicity in this girl of eighteen.  It was, so to speak, not quite civilized; it was not in the style of American young ladies; our officer had never, at home, observed anything like it; and, of course—­O yes, of course, it fascinated him.  The truth is, he was so far gone in loving her that he would have been charmed by her ways no matter what they might have been.