those of the younger officers, with consummate grace.  She shows no preference, will grant no favors.  She makes fair distribution of her dances at the hops at the fort and the parties in town.  There are young civilians who begin to be devoted in society and to come out to the fort on every possible opportunity, and these, too, she welcomes with laughing grace and cordiality.  She is a glowing, radiant, gorgeous beauty this cool autumn, and she rides and drives and dances, and, the women say, flirts, and looks handsomer every day, and poor Armitage is beginning to look very grave and depressed.  “He wooes and wins not,” is the cry.  His wound has almost healed, so far as the thigh is concerned, and his crutches are discarded, but his heart is bleeding, and it tells on his general condition.  The doctors say he ought to be getting well faster, and so they tell Miss Renwick,—­at least somebody does; but still she relents not, and it is something beyond the garrison’s power of conjecture to decide what the result will be.  Into her pretty white-and-yellow room no one penetrates except at her invitation, even when the garrison ladies are spending the day at the colonel’s; and even if they did there would be no visible sign by which they could judge whether his flowers were treasured or his picture honored above others.  Into her brave and beautiful nature none can gaze and say with any confidence either “she loves” or “she loves not.”  Winter comes, with biting cold and blinding snow, and still there is no sign.  The joyous holidays, the glad New Year, are almost at hand, and still there is no symptom of surrender.  No one dreams of the depth and reverence and gratitude and loyalty and strength of the love that is burning in her heart until, all of a sudden, in the most unexpected and astonishing way, it bursts forth in sight of all.

They had been down skating on the slough, a number of the youngsters and the daughters of the garrison.  Rollins was there, doing the devoted to Mamie Gray, and already there were gossips whispering that she would soon forget she ever knew such a beau as Jerrold in the new-found happiness of another one; Hall was there with the doctor’s pretty daughter, and Mrs. Hoyt was matronizing the party, which would, of course, have been incomplete without Alice.  She had been skating hand in hand with a devoted young subaltern in the artillery, and poor Armitage, whose leg was unequal to skating, had been ruefully admiring the scene.  He had persuaded Sloat to go out and walk with him, and Sloat went; but the hollow mockery of the whole thing became apparent to him after they had been watching the skaters awhile, and he got chilled and wanted Armitage to push ahead.  The captain said he believed his leg was too stiff for further tramping and would be the better for a rest; and Sloat left him.