all further talk on that subject.  There was one on which she could not hear enough, and that was about the man who had been most instrumental in the rescue of her name and honor.  Alice had only tender sorrow and no reproach for her step-father when, after her mother told her the story of his sad experience twenty years before, she related his distress of mind and suspicion when he read Jerrold’s letter.  It was then that Alice said, “And against that piece of evidence no man, I suppose, would hold me guiltless.”

“You are wrong, dear,” was her mother’s answer.  “It was powerless to move Captain Armitage.  He scouted the idea of your guilt from the moment he set eyes on you, and never rested until he had overturned the last atom of evidence.  Even I had to explain,” said her mother “simply to confirm his theory of the light Captain Chester had seen and the shadows and the form at the window.  It was just exactly as Armitage reasoned it out.  I was wretched and wakeful, sleeping but fitfully, that night.  I arose and took some bromide about three o’clock and soon afterwards heard a fall, or a noise like one.  I thought of you and got up and went in your room, and all was quiet there, but it seemed close and warm:  so I raised your shade, and then left both your door and mine open and went back to bed.  I dozed away presently, and then woke feeling all startled again,—­don’t you know?—­the sensation one experiences when aroused from sleep, certain that there has been a strange and startling noise, and yet unable to tell what it was?  I lay still a moment, but the colonel slept through it all, and I wondered at it.  I knew there had been a shot, or something, but could not bear to disturb him.  At last I got up again and went to your room to be sure you were all right, and you were sleeping soundly still; but a breeze was beginning to blow and flap your shade to and fro, so I drew it and went out, taking my lamp with me this time and softly closing your door behind me.  See how it all seemed to fit in with everything else that had happened.  It took a man with a will of his own and an unshaken faith in woman to stand firm against such evidence.”

And, though Alice Renwick was silent, she appreciated the fact none the less.  Day after day she clung to her stalwart brother’s side.  She had ceased to ask questions about Captain Armitage and the strange greeting after the first day or two, but, oddly enough, she could never let him talk long of any subject but that campaign, of his ride with the captain to the front, of the long talk they had had, and the stirring fight and the magnificent way in which Armitage had handled his long skirmish-line.  He was enthusiastic in his praise of the tall Saxon captain.  He soon noted how silent and absorbed she sat when he was the theme of discourse; he incidentally mentioned little things “he” had said about “her” that morning, and marked how her color rose and her eyes flashed quick, joyful, questioning glance at his face, then fell in maiden shyness.  He had speedily gauged the cause of that strange excitement displayed by Armitage at seeing him the morning he rode in with the scout.  Now he was gauging, with infinite delight, the other side of the question.  The brother-like, he began to twit and tease her; and that was the last of the confidences.