“He may well have grey hairs, John.  The times are bad.  He is worried.  Imagine Uncle Jim economical!”

“Incredible.”

“Yes.  He told me that his talk with Colonel Beauregard had made him despair of a peaceful ending, and usually he is hopeful.”

“Well, don’t make me talk politics.  We rarely do.  Isn’t this outlook beautiful?  People rarely come here and it often gives me a chance to be alone and to think.”

“And what do you think about, John?” She was again curious.

“Oh, many things, big and little.  Uncle Jim, Aunt Ann, Mr. Rivers, Dixy—­hornets, muskrats,” he laughed.  She noted the omission of Leila Grey.

“And what else?”

“Oh, the tragedy of Arnold,—­the pathos of Washington’s despair,—­his words, ‘Who is there now I can trust?’”

“It came home to me, John, this morning when Colonel Beauregard showed us the portraits of the major-generals of the Revolution.  I saw a vacant place and a tablet like the rest, but with ‘Major General—­Born 1740’ and no name!  I asked what it meant.  The Colonel said only, ‘Arnold.’  That is too pitiful—­and his wife—­I read somewhere that she was young, beautiful, and innocent of his horrible treason.”

“Yes, what crime could be worse than his, and, too, such a gallant soldier.  Let us walk around the fort.  Oh, by the way, I found here last week two Continental buttons, Third Pennsylvania Infantry.  Like to have them, Leila?  I thought you might.”

“Would I like?” She took them eagerly.  “They ought to be gilded and used as sleeve-links.”  But where she kept them John Penhallow never knew.  They did not make the sleeve-links for which she agreed they were so suitable.

“Isn’t there a walk down through the woods?” asked Leila.

“Yes, this way.”  Leaving the road they followed a rough trail through the woods to a more open space half-way down the hill.  Here he paused.  “This is our last chance to talk until I am at Grey Pine.”

“That will be very soon, John.”  She sat down amid numberless violets, adding, “There will be the hop to-night, as you call it.”

“Yes, the hop.  I forgot.  You will give me the first dance?”

To her surprise he asked no others.  “Cadets have to learn to dance, but Baltimore may have left you critical.”

Still on her investigation track, she returned, “Oh, Baltimore!  It seems odd to me that I should have seen so much of the world of men and women and you who are older so little in this military monastery.”

He laughed outright.  “We have the officers’ families, and if we are allowed to visit, the Kembles and Gouverneurs and Pauldings across the river—­no better social life anywhere.  And as for young women—­sisters, cousins—­embarras de choix, Miss Grey.  They come in flocks like the blackbirds.  I assure you that this branch of natural history is pretty well illustrated at the Point.  We are apt to be rather over-supplied in June.”