"Serene mid love's alarms,
For all time shall the Maids-at-Arms,
Wearing the ghost-ring, triumph with their constancy.
And sweetly conquer with a sigh
And vanquish with a tear
Captains a trembling world might fear.

"This for the deed she did at Ashby Farms,
Helen of Ormond, Royal Maid-at-Arms!"

Staring at the picture, lips quivering with the soundless words, such
wretched loneliness came over me that a dryness in my throat set me
gulping, and I groped my way back to the settle by the fireplace and sat
down heavily in homesick solitude.

[Illustration: "I SAT DOWN HEAVILY IN HOMESICK SOLITUDE".]

Then hate came, a quick hatred for these Northern skies, and these
strangers of the North who dared claim kin with me, to lure me northward
with false offer of council and mockery of hospitality.

I was on my feet again in a flash, hot with anger, ready with insult to
meet insult, for I meant to go ere I had greeted my host--an insult,
indeed, and a deadly one among us. Furious, I bent to snatch my rifle
from the settle where it lay, and, as I flung it to my shoulder,
wheeling to go, my eyes fell upon a figure stealing down the stairway
from above, a woman in flowered silk, bare of throat and elbow, fingers
scarcely touching the banisters as she moved.