fringing the tussocks of salt grass with concentric curves of spume
and drift, or tumultuously tossing its white-capped waves over the
spreading expanse of the lower bay. The low thunder of breakers in
the farther estuary broke monotonously on the ear. But his eye was
fascinated by a dull shifting streak on the horizon, that, even as
he gazed, shuddered, whitened along its whole line, and then grew
ghastly gray again. It was the ocean bar.


IV.


"Well, I must say," said Cicely Preston, emphasizing the usual
feminine imperative for perfectly gratuitous statement, as she
pushed back her chair from the commandant's breakfast table, "I
MUST really say that I don't see anything particularly heroic in
doing something wrong, lying about it just to get other folks into
trouble, and then rushing off to do penance in a high wind and an
open boat. But she's pretty, and wears a man's shirt and coat, and
of course THAT settles anything. But why earrings and wet white
stockings and slippers? And why that Gothic arch of front and a
boy's hat? That's what I simply ask;" and the youngest daughter of
Colonel Preston rose from the table, shook out the skirt of her
pretty morning dress, and, placing her little thumbs in the belt of
her smart waist, paused witheringly for a reply.

"You are most unfair, my child," returned Colonel Preston gravely.
"Her giving food and clothes to a deserter may have been only an
ordinary instinct of humanity towards a fellow-creature who
appeared to be suffering, to say nothing of M'Caffrey's plausible