at the range.  Thanks to the searching examination to which every soldier must be subjected before he can enter the service of Uncle Sam, and to the disciplined order of the lives of the men at Sibley, maladies of any serious nature were almost unknown.  It was a gloriously healthy post, as everybody admitted, and, to judge from the specimen of young-womanhood that came singing, “blithe and low,” out among the roses this same joyous morning, exuberant physical well-being was not restricted to the men.

A fairer picture never did dark beauty present than Alice Renwick, as she bent among the bushes or reached high among the vines in search of her favorite flowers.  Tall, slender, willowy, yet with exquisitely-rounded form; slim, dainty little hands and feet; graceful arms and wrists all revealed in the flowing sleeves of her snowy, web-like gown, fitting her and displaying her sinuous grace of form as gowns so seldom do to-day.  And then her face!—­a glorious picture of rich, ripe, tropical beauty, with its great, soulful, sunlit eyes, heavily shaded though they were with those wondrous lashes; beautiful, too, in contour as was the lithe body, and beautiful in every feature, even to the rare and dewy curve of her red lips, half opened as she sang.  She was smiling to herself, as she crooned her soft, murmuring melody, and every little while the great dark eyes glanced over towards the shaded doors of Bachelors’ Row.  There was no one up to watch and tell:  why should she not look thither, and even stand one moment peering under the veranda at a darkened window half-way down the row, as though impatient at the non-appearance of some familiar signal?  How came the laggard late?  How slept the knight while here his lady stood impatient?  She twined the leaves and roses in a fragrant knot, ran lightly within and laid them on the snowy cloth beside the colonel’s seat at table, came forth and plucked some more and fastened them, blushing, blissful, in the lace-fringed opening of her gown, through which, soft and creamy, shone the perfect neck.

  “Daisy, tell my fortune, pray: 
  He loves me not,—­he loves me,”

she blithely sang, then, hurrying to the gate, shaded her eyes with the shapely hand and gazed intently.  ’Twas nearing eight,—­nearing breakfast-time.  But some one was coming.  Horrid!  Captain Chester, of all men!  Coming, of course, to see papa, and papa not yet down, and mamma had a headache and had decided not to come down at all, she would breakfast in her room.  What girl on earth when looking and longing and waiting for the coming of a graceful youth of twenty-six would be anything but dismayed at the substitution therefor of a bulky, heavy-hearted captain of forty-six, no matter if he were still unmarried?  And yet her smile was sweet and cordial.