Miss Lou could maintain her self-control no longer.  She burst into tears and sobbed helplessly.

“You poor little girl,” exclaimed the captain in deep commiseration.  “Here I’ve been talking like a garrulous fool when your heart is burdened with some trouble that perhaps you would like to speak to me about.  Tell me, my child, just as little Sadie would.”

“My heart is burdened with trouble, captain; it feels as if it would break when I hear you talk so.  Would to God little Sadie were here, and your beautiful wife too!  Oh, what shall I say?  How can I, how can I?”

“Miss Baron!” he exclaimed, looking at her in vague alarm.

“Oh, Captain Hanfield, you are a brave, unselfish man like Yarry.  Don’t make it too hard for me.  Oh, I feel as if I could scarcely breathe.”

As he saw her almost panting at his side and tears streaming from her eyes, the truth began to dawn upon him.  He looked at her steadily and silently for a moment, then reached out his hand as he said in an awed whisper, “Is it on account of me?  Did Borden send you here?”

She took his hand, bowed her forehead upon it and wept speechlessly.

She felt it tremble for a moment, then it was withdrawn and placed on her bowed head.  “So you are the angel of death to me?” the officer faltered.

Her tears were her only, yet sufficient answer.  Both were silent, she not having the heart to look at him.

At last he said in deep tones, “I wasn’t expecting this.  It will make a great change in”—­and then he was silent again.

She took his limp hand and bowed her forehead on it, as before feeling by some fine instinct that her unspoken sympathy was best.

It was.  The brave man, in this last emergency, did as he would have done in the field at the head of his company if subjected to a sudden attack.  He promptly rearranged and marshalled all his faculties to face the enemy.  There was not a moment of despairing, vain retreat.  In the strong pressure upon his mind of those questions which must now be settled once for all, he forgot the girl by his side.  He was still so long that she timidly raised her head and was awed by his stern, fixed expression of deep abstraction.  She did not disturb him except as the stifled sobs of her deep, yet now passing agitation convulsed her bosom, and she began to give her attention to Uncle Lusthah, hitherto unheeded.  The old man was on his knees in a dusky corner, praying in low tones.  “Oh, I’m so glad he’s here,” she thought.  “I’m glad he’s praying God to help us both.”  In the uncalculating sympathy and strength of her nature she had unconsciously entered into the dying man’s experience and was suffering with him.  Indeed, her heart sank with a deeper dread and awe than he from the great change which he had faced so often as to be familiar with its thought.

At last he seemed to waken to her presence and said compassionately, “Poor little girl! so all your grief was about me.  How pale you are!”