Heavens! how beautiful she was, with her sparkling eyes and radiant color, glowing with the graceful exercise!  He sat there on an old log, watching the skaters as they flew by him, and striving to keep up an impartial interest, or an appearance of it, for the other girls.  But the red sun was going down, and twilight was on them all of a sudden, and he could see nothing but that face and form.  He closed his eyes a moment to shut out the too eager glare of the glowing disk taking its last fierce peep at them over the western bluffs, and as he closed them the same vision came back,—­the picture that had haunted his every living, dreaming moment since the beautiful August Sunday in the woodland lane at Sablon.  With undying love, with changeless passion, his life was given over to the fair, slender maiden he had seen in all the glory of the sunshine and the golden-rod, standing with uplifted head, with all her soul shining in her beautiful eyes and thrilling in her voice.  Both worshipping and worshipped was Alice Renwick as she sang her hymn of praise in unison with the swelling chorus that floated through the trees from the little brown church upon the hill.  From that day she was Queen Alice in every thought, and he her loyal, faithful knight for weal or woe.

Boom went the sunset gun far up on the parade above them.  ’Twas dinner-time, and the skaters were compelled to give up their pastime.  Armitage set his teeth at the entirely too devotional attitude of the artilleryman as he slowly and lingeringly removed her skates, and turned away in that utterly helpless frame of mind which will overtake the strongest men on similar occasions.  He had been sitting too long in the cold, and was chilled through and stiff, and his wounded leg seemed numb.  Leaning heavily on his stout stick, he began slowly and painfully the ascent to the railway, and chose for the purpose a winding path that was far less steep, though considerably longer, than the sharp climb the girls and their escorts made so light of.  One after another the glowing faces of the fair skaters appeared above the embankment, and their gallants carefully convoyed them across the icy and slippery track to the wooden platform beyond.  Armitage, toiling slowly up his pathway, heard their blithe laughter, and thought with no little bitterness that it was a case of “out of sight out of mind” with him, as with better men.  What sense was there in his long devotion to her?  Why stand between her and the far more natural choice of a lover nearer her years?  “Like unto like” was Nature’s law.  It was flying in the face of Providence to expect to win the love of one so young and fair, when others so young and comely craved it.  The sweat was beaded on his forehead as he neared the top and came in sight of the platform.  Yes, they had no thought for him.  Already Mrs. Hoyt was half-way up the wooden stairs, and the others were scattered more or less between that point and the platform at the station.  Far