bank!” Armitage glanced around; determined; gave one mighty effort; the iron-ferruled stick slipped on the icy track, and down he went, prone between the glistening rails, even as the black vomiting monster came thundering round the bend.  He had struck his head upon the iron, and was stunned, not senseless, but scrambled to his hands and knees and strove to crawl away.  Even as he did so he heard a shriek of anguish in his ears, and with one wild leap Alice Renwick came flying from the platform in the very face of advancing death, and the next instant, her arm clasped about his neck, his strong arms tightly clasping her, they were lying side by side, bruised, stunned, but safe, in a welcoming snow-drift half-way down the hither bank.

When Stuart reached the scene, as soon as the engine and some wrecking-cars had thundered by, he looked down upon a picture that dispelled any lingering doubt in his mind.  Armitage, clasping Queen Alice to his heart, was half rising from the blessed mantlet of the snow, and she, her head upon his broad shoulder, was smiling faintly up into his face:  then the glorious eyes closed in a death-like swoon.

* * * * *

Fort Sibley had its share of sensations that eventful year.  Its crowning triumph in the one that followed was the wedding in the early spring.  Of all the lovely women there assembled, the bride by common consent stood unrivalled,—­Queen Alice indeed.  There was some difference of opinion among authorities as to who was really the finest-looking and most soldierly among the throng of officers in the conventional full-dress uniform:  many there were who gave the palm to the tall, dark, slender lieutenant of cavalry who wore his shoulder-knots for the first time on this occasion, and who, for a man from the ranks, seemed consummately at home in the manifold and trying duties of a groomsman.  Mrs. Maynard, leaning on his arm at a later hour and looking up rapturously in his bronzed features, had no divided opinion.  While others had by no means so readily forgotten or forgiven the mad freak that so nearly involved them all in wretched misunderstanding, she had nothing but rejoicing in his whole career.  Proud of the gallant officer who had won the daughter whom she loved so tenderly, she still believes, in the depths of the boundless mother-love, that no man can quite surpass her soldier son.

[Footnote A:  By act of Congress, officers may be addressed by the title of the highest rank held by them in the volunteer service during the war.  The colonel always punctiliously so addressed his friend and subordinate, although in the army his grade was simply that of first lieutenant.]

THE END.