tend to increase her interest and engage her heart.

This done, there was nothing left for me but to wait and to hope.
And there is nothing further from my character: in love and in
war, I am all for the forward movement; and these days of waiting
made my purgatory. It is a fact that I loved her a great deal
better at the end of them, for love comes, like bread, from a
perpetual rehandling. And besides, I was fallen into a panic of
fear. How, if she came no more, how was I to continue to endure my
empty days? how was I to fall back and find my interest in the
major's lessons, the lieutenant's chess, in a twopenny sale in the
market, or a halfpenny addition to the prison fare?

Days went by, and weeks; I had not the courage to calculate, and
to-day I have not the courage to remember; but at last she was
there. At last I saw her approach me in the company of a boy about
her own age, and whom I divined at once to be her brother.

I rose and bowed in silence.

'This is my brother, Mr. Ronald Gilchrist,' said she. 'I have told
him of your sufferings. He is so sorry for you!'

'It is more than I have the right to ask,' I replied; 'but among
gentlefolk these generous sentiments are natural. If your brother
and I were to meet in the field, we should meet like tigers; but
when he sees me here disarmed and helpless, he forgets his
animosity.' (At which, as I had ventured to expect, this beardless
champion coloured to the ears for pleasure.) 'Ah, my dear young
lady,' I continued, 'there are many of your countrymen languishing