to the rule that only “light wines and beer” should be sold at the store, and was lenient to the poor devils who overloaded and deranged their stomachs in consequence.  But Chester no sooner found himself in command than he launched into the crusade with redoubled energy, and spent hours of the day and night trying to capture invaders of the reservation with a bottle in their pockets.  The bridge was guarded, so was the crossing of the Cloudwater to the south, and so were the two roads entering from the north and west; and yet there was liquor coming in, and, as though “to give Chester a benefit,” some of the men in barracks had a royal old spree on Saturday night, and the captain was sorer-headed than any of the participants in consequence.  In some way he heard that a rowboat came up at night and landed supplies of contraband down by the river-side out of sight and hearing of the sentry at the railway-station, and it was thither he hurriedly led Rollins this Monday evening.

They turned across the railway on reaching the bottom of the long stairs, and scrambled down the rocky embankment on the other side, Rollins following in reluctant silence and holding his sword so that it would not rattle, but he had no faith in the theory of smugglers.  He felt in some vague and unsatisfactory way a sense of discomfort and anxiety over his captain’s late proceedings, and this stealthy descent seemed fraught with ill omen.

Once down in the flats, their footsteps made no noise in the yielding sand, and all was silence save for the plash of the waters along the shores.  Far down the river were the reflections of one or two twinkling lights, and close under the bank in the slack-water a few stars were peeping at their own images, but no boat was there, and the captain led still farther to a little copse of willow, and there, in the shadows, sure enough, was a row-boat, with a little lantern dimly burning, half hidden in the stern.

Not only that, but as they halted at the edge of the willows the captain put forth a warning hand and cautioned silence.  No need.  Rollins’s straining eyes were already fixed on two figures that were standing in the shadows not ten feet away,—­one that of a tall, slender man, the other a young girl.  It was a moment before Rollins could recognize either; but in that moment the girl had turned suddenly, had thrown her arms about the neck of the tall young man, and, with her head pillowed on his breast, was gazing up in his face.

“Kiss me once more, Howard.  Then I must go,” they heard her whisper.

Rollins seized his captain’s sleeve, and strove, sick at heart, to pull him back; but Chester stoutly stood his ground.  In the few seconds more that they remained they saw his arms more closely enfold her.  They saw her turn at the brink, and, in an utter abandonment of rapturous, passionate love, throw her arms again about his neck and stand on tiptoe to reach his face with her warm lips.  They could