The procession passed once more around the hall, Anita’s face flushed and smiling, Broussard outwardly calm, but the red blood showing under his dark skin.  When they reached the entrance doors and were about to ride out Sergeant McGillicuddy stopped Broussard with a word.  The audience, watching and smiling, knew what would happen and all eyes were fixed on the C. O.’s. box.  In a minute Broussard, with his cavalry cap in his hand, was seen mounting the stairs; Colonel Fortescue rose and clasped Broussard’s hand, while Mrs. Fortescue frankly kissed him on both cheeks.  The band broke loose again and so did the people.  Although Fort Blizzard was a great fort it was so far away in the frozen northwest that those within its walls constituted one vast family.  Anita was known to all of them, officers and ladies, troopers and troopers’ wives and children, and the company washerwomen, and the regimental blacksmiths; they felt as if Broussard had saved the life of a child of their own.

Colonel Fortescue was a soldier and recovered himself and walked bravely with Mrs. Fortescue in the moonlight to their quarters, Broussard and Anita riding ahead as if nothing had happened, when everything had happened.  At the door Broussard left Anita; both had to dress for the ball.

In the office, his City of Refuge, Colonel Fortescue sat in his chair and trembled like a leaf.  Mrs. Fortescue, with tender words and soft caresses, comforted him.

“Stay with me, dear wife,” he said, “I tell you as truly as if I were this moment facing a firing squad that I never knew what fear was until this night, and yet I thought I knew it and could feel my heart quivering as I cheered my men to the charge.  Betty, I love our child too much, too much!”

“No,” said Mrs. Fortescue, kissing his cheek, “you don’t love her half as much as you love me.  Suppose I had been there in our child’s place.”

The Colonel put his arm over his face.

“Don’t, Betty—­I can’t bear it,” he cried.

“But you must bear it; you must go to the ball in twenty minutes.”

The Colonel, with bewildered eyes, looked at her as if to ask what were balls, and where?

Mrs. Fortescue said no more.  Presently they heard Anita’s light step on the stairs.  She flitted into the office and looked, in her ball gown of shimmering white, as pure and sweet as one of her white doves.

“I’m ready for the ball, dad,” she said, smiling and kissing the Colonel and her mother, “I am a soldier’s daughter, and I can’t let a little thing keep me from my duty—­which is, to go to the ball.”

Colonel Fortescue caught her in his arms.

“What a spirit!” he cried brokenly, “You have the making of ten soldiers in you, my daughter, my little daughter!”

Mrs. Fortescue rose and drew her beautiful evening cloak around her.  Colonel Fortescue noticed for the first time how pale she was, but there was a smile on her lips and the fine light of courage in her eye; it was partly from her that Anita inherited her brave spirit.