“Hi!  Miss ’Nita, here’s your letter you carry in your bosom.”

Colonel Fortescue suddenly grew cross; this thing of having a man’s daughter carrying around next her heart a letter from another man is very annoying to a father of Colonel Fortescue’s type.  And Anita was more tender and devoted than ever, keeping up a brave show of loyalty, although she had already surrendered the citadel.

As the winter at Fort Blizzard was like the frozen regions which the old Goths believed to be the Inferno, so the summer was like a blast from the eternal furnace.  The hot winds swept over the arid plains and the sun was more vengeful than the biting cold.  The energies of many drooped, and the sergeants grew short with the men.  But cheerfulness prevailed at the Commandant’s house.  In July Beverley Fortescue, named for the fine old Virginia Colonel, Mrs. Fortescue’s grandfather, was to come home, in all the glory of his twenty-one years, wearing for the first time the splendid cavalry uniform instead of the grey and gold and black of a military cadet.  More than that, he was to be assigned to duty at Fort Blizzard.  When Mrs. Fortescue heard this, she trembled a little; it was almost too much of joy; this last crowning gift of fate made her almost afraid.  And Beverley was to see, for the first time, the After-Clap, who was so much like Beverley that the Colonel and Mrs. Fortescue could hardly persuade themselves he was their last born, and not their first born.

On the great day, Beverley came.  In the soft July evening, at the threshold, stood Mrs. Fortescue, holding by the hand the After-Clap, a sturdy little chap for his two-and-a-half years.  The mother was smiling and blushing like a girl.  Behind her stood Kettle, his face shining as if it had been varnished, and next him was Sergeant McGillicuddy, who had taught Beverley to ride and to shoot and to skate and to box, and all the manly sports of boyhood.  Mrs. McGillicuddy, ruddy and beaming, towered over the little Sergeant.

Colonel Fortescue and Anita stood on the lowest of the stone steps.  Presently, a motor whirled up and Beverley stepped out, looking so handsome in his well-fitting civilian clothes, with his new straw hat, in which he felt slightly queer.  The Colonel wrung his hand saying: 

“Boy!  Boy!  How glad we are to have you once more!”

Anita covered Beverley’s face with kisses, but Mrs. Fortescue stood like a queen, smiling and gracious, to receive her boy’s reverence.  Beverley caught her in his strong young grasp; she looked so young, so lovely, so full of radiant life, that she seemed like an older Anita.  Then Mrs. Fortescue raised the After-Clap and put him in Beverley’s arms.  Accustomed to much adulation, the After-Clap was, in general, coolly supercilious to strangers, but he seemed much pleased with Beverley’s appearance, and called him “Bruvver,” as he had called Broussard, who had been long since forgotten by the After-Clap.