From her only one of the letters she wrote reached him.  It was picked up in the sand at Siboney after the medical corps, in an effort to wipe out the yellow-fever, had set fire to the post-office tent.

She had written it some weeks before from her summer home at Newport, and in it she said:  “When you went to the front, I thought no woman could love more than I did then.  But, now I know.  At least I know one girl who can.  She cannot write it.  She can never tell you.  You must just believe.

“Each day I hear from you, for as soon as the paper comes, I take it down to the rocks and read your cables, and I look south across the ocean to Cuba, and try to see you in all that fighting and heat and fever.  But I am not afraid.  For each morning I wake to find I love you more; that it has grown stronger, more wonderful, more hard to bear.  And I know the charm I gave you grows with it, and is more powerful, and that it will bring you back to me wearing new honors, ’bearing your sheaves with you.’

“As though I cared for your new honors.  I want you, you, you—­only you.”

When Santiago surrendered and the invading army settled down to arrange terms of peace, and imbibe fever, and General Miles moved to Porto Rico, Chesterton moved with him.

In that pretty little island a command of regulars under a general of the regular army had, in a night attack, driven back the Spaniards from Adhuntas.  The next afternoon as the column was in line of march, and the men were shaking themselves into their accoutrements, a dusty, sweating volunteer staff officer rode down the main street of Adhuntas, and with the authority of a field marshal, held up his hand.

“General Miles’s compliments, sir,” he panted, “and peace is declared!”

Different men received the news each in a different fashion.  Some whirled their hats in the air and cheered.  Those who saw promotion and the new insignia on their straps vanish, swore deeply.  Chesterton fell upon his saddle-bags and began to distribute his possessions among the enlisted men.  After he had remobilized, his effects consisted of a change of clothes, his camera, water-bottle, and his medicine case.  In his present state of health and spirits he could not believe he stood in need of the medicine case, but it was a gift from Miss Armitage, and carried with it a promise from him that he always would carry it.  He had “packed” it throughout the campaign, and for others it had proved of value.

“I take it you are leaving us,” said an officer enviously.

“I am leaving you so quick,” cried Chesterton laughing, “that you won’t even see the dust.  There’s a transport starts from Mayaguez at six to-morrow morning, and, if I don’t catch it, this pony will die on the wharf.”

“The road to Mayaguez is not healthy for Americans,” said the general in command.  “I don’t think I ought to let you go.  The enemy does not know peace is on yet, and there are a lot of guerillas—­”