and by leaving the party at midnight he could get home, change his dress, run down the bank and row down-stream to the Point, there leave his skiff and climb up to the road.  He met us there at one o’clock, and the Suttons would never betray either of us, though they did not know we were engaged.  We sat in their parlor a quarter of an hour after we got to town, and then ’twas time to go, and there was only a little ten minutes’ walk down to the stable.  I had seen him such a very short time, and I had so much to tell him.” (Chester could have burst into rapturous applause had she been an actress.  Her cheeks were aflame, her eyes full of fire and spirit, her bosom heaving, her little foot tapping the ground, as she stood there leaning on the colonel’s fence and looking straight up in the perturbed veteran’s face.  She was magnificent, he said to himself; and, in her bravery, self-sacrifice, and indignation, she was.) “It was then after two, and I could just as well go with him,—­somebody had to bring the buggy back,—­and Graves himself hitched in his roan mare for me, and I drove out, picked up Mr. Jerrold at the corner, and we came out here again through the darkness together.  Even when we got to the Point I did not let him go at once.  It was over an hour’s drive.  It was fully half-past three before we parted.  He sprang down the path to reach the river-side; and before he was fairly in his boat and pulling up against the stream, I heard, far over here somewhere, those two faint shots.  That was the shooting he spoke of in his letter to me,—­not to her; and what business Colonel Maynard had to read and exhibit to his officers a letter never intended for him I cannot understand.  Mr. Jerrold says it was not what he wanted it to be at all, as he wrote hastily, so he wrote another, and sent that to me by Merrick that morning after his absence was discovered.  It probably blew out of the window, as these other things did this morning.  See for yourself, captain.”  And she pointed to the two or three bills and scraps that had evidently only recently fluttered in among the now neglected roses.  “Then when he was aroused at reveille and you threatened him with punishment and held over his head the startling accusation that you knew of our meeting and our secret, he was naturally infinitely distressed, and could only write to warn me, and he managed to get in and say good-by to me at the station.  As for me, I was back home by five o’clock, let myself noiselessly up to my room, and no one knew it but the Suttons and old Graves, neither of whom would betray me.  I had no fear of the long dark road:  I had ridden and driven as a child all over these bluffs and prairies before there was any town worth mentioning, and in days when my father and I found only friends—­not enemies—­here at Sibley.”

“Miss Beaubien, let me protest against your accusation.  It is not for me to reprove your grave imprudence or recklessness; nor have I the right to disapprove your choice of Mr. Jerrold.  Let me say at once that you have none but friends here; and if it ever should be known to what lengths you went to save him, it will only make him more envied and you more genuinely admired.  I question your wisdom, but, upon my soul, I admire your bravery and spirit.  You have cleared him of a terrible charge.”