ence," answered Rast, magnanimously. "I shall always like you."

That is because you are so generous, dear."

cap.

The rough plain costume was becoming to the vigorous girl. "It tones her down," thought the lieutenant's wife; "she really looks quite well.”

In the mean while Rast had gone across to the dining-room to find Bert Bryden, the commandant's son, and borrow his

66

"Perhaps it is," answered the boy. This was two years before, when they were fourteen and fifteen years old; at sixteen and seventeen they had advanced | sled. but little in their ideas of life and of each other. Still, there was a slight change, for Anne now hurried the braiding; it hurt her a little that Rast should gaze so steadily at the rough, ugly hair.

When the Greek was finished they said good-by to the chaplain, and left the cottage together. As they crossed the inner parade ground, taking the snow path which led toward the entrance grating, and which was kept shovelled out by the soldiers, the snow walls on each side rising to their chins, Rast suddenly exclaimed: “Oh, Annet, I have thought of something! I am going to take you down the fort hill on a sled. Now you need not object, because I shall do it in any case, although we are grown up, and I am going to college. Probably it will be the last time. I shall borrow Bert Bryden's sled. Come along."

And you're really going to take Miss Douglas down the hill!" said the boy. “Hurrah! I'll look out of the side window and see. What fun! Such a big girl to go sliding!"

Anne was a big girl to go; but Rast was not to be withstood. She would not get on the sled at the door, as he wished, but followed him out through the sally-port, and around to the top of the long steep fort hill, whose snowy, slippery road-track was hardly used at all during the winter, save by coasters, and these few in number, for the village boys, French and halfbreeds, did not view the snow as an amusement, or toiling up hill as a recreation. The two little boys at the fort, and what Scotch and New England blood there was in the town, held a monopoly of the coasting.

"There they go!" cried Bert, from his perch on the deep window-seat overlooking the frozen Straits and the village below. "Mamma, you must let me take you down now; you are not so big as Miss Douglas."

All the boy in him was awake; he seized Anne's wrist, and dragged her through first one cross-path, then another, until at last they reached the commandant's door. From the windows their heads had been visible, turning and crossing above the heaped-up snow. "Rast, | laughed. and Anne Douglas," said Mrs. Bryden, recognizing the girl's fur cap and the youth's golden hair. She tapped on the window, and signed to them to enter without ceremony. What is it, Rast? Goodmorning, Anne; what a color you have, child!"

"Rast has been making me run," said Anne, smiling, and coming toward the hearth, where the fort ladies were sitting together sewing, and rather lugubriously recalling Christmas times in their old Eastern homes.

"Throw off your cloak," said Mrs. Cromer, else you will take cold when you go out again."

"We shall only stay a moment," answered Anne.

The cloak was of strong dark blue woollen cloth, closely fitted to the figure, with a small cape; it reached from her throat to her ankles, and was met and completed by fur boots, fur gloves, and a little fur

Mrs. Bryden, a slender little woman, Fancy the colonel's horror," she said, "if he should see me sliding down that hill! And yet it looks as if it might be rather stirring," she added, watching the flying sled and its load. The sled, of island manufacture, was large and sledge-like; it carried two comfortably. Anne held on by Rast's shoulders, sitting behind him, while he guided the flying craft. Down they glided, darted, faster and faster, losing all sense of everything after a while save speed. Reaching the village street at last, they flew across it, and out on the icy pier beyond, where Rast by a skillful manoeuvre stopped the sled on the very verge. The fort ladies were all at the windows now, watching.

How dangerous!" said Mrs. Bryden, forgetting her admiration of a moment before with a mother's irrelevant rapidity. 'Albert, let me never see or hear of your sliding on that pier; another inch, and they would have gone over, down on the broken ice below!"

"I couldn't do it, mamma, even if I tried," replied Master Albert, regretfully; "I always tumble off the sled at the street, or else run into one of the warehouses. Only Rast Pronando can steer across slanting, and out on that pier."

'I am very glad to hear it," replied Mrs. Bryden; "but your father must also give you his positive commands on the subject. I had no idea that the pier was ever attempted."

"And it is not, mamma, except by Rast," said the boy. "Can't I try it when I am as old as he is ?"

"Hear the child!" said Mrs. Cromer, going back to her seat by the fire; "one would suppose he expected to stay here all his life. Do you not know, Bert, that we are only here for a little while-a year or two? Before you are eighteen months older very likely you will find yourself out on the plains. What a life it is!"

'He was born here: Dr. Gaston told me his history. It seems that the boy's father was a wild younger son of the second Peter, grandson, of course, of the original Peter, from whom the family derive all their greatness-and money. This Peter the third, only his name was not Peter, but John (the eldest sons were the Peters)-wandered away from home, and came up here, where his father's name was well known among the directors of the Fur Company. John Pronando, who must have been of very different fibre from the rest of the family, liked the wild life of the border, and even went off on one or two long expeditions to the Red River of the North and the Upper Missouri after furs with the hunters of the Company. His father then offered him a position here which would carry with it authority, but he curtly refused, saying that he had no taste for a desk and pen like Peter. Peter was his brother, who had begun du

of taking care of the large accumulation of land which makes the family so rich. Peter was the good boy always. Father Peter was naturally angry with John, and inclined even then to cross his name off the family list of heirs; this, however, was not really done until the prodigal crowned his long course of misdeeds by marrying the pretty daughter of a Scotchman, who held one of the smaller clerkships in the Company's warehouses here-only a grade above the hunters themselves. This was the end.

The fort ladies all sighed. It was a habit they had. They drew the dreariest pictures of their surroundings and privations in their letters homeward, and real-tifully at an early age his life-long task ly believed them, theoretically. In truth, there were some privations; but would any one of them have exchanged army life for civilian? To the last, thorough army ladies retain their ways; you recognize them even when retired to private and perhaps more prosperous life. Cosmopolitans, they do not sink into the ruts of small-town life; they are never provincial. They take the world easily, having a pleasant, generous taste for its pleasures, and making light of the burdens that fall to their share. All little local rules and ways are nothing to them: neither here nor anywhere are they to remain long. With this habit and manner they keep up a vasted the daughter of a flat-boat man on the amount of general cheeriness-vast indeed, when one considers how small the incomes often are. But if small, they are also sure.

"Rast Pronando is too old for such frolics, I think," said Mrs. Rankin, the lieutenant's wife, beginning another seam in the new dress for her baby.

Almost anything else might

have been forgiven save a marriage of that kind. If John Pronando had select

Ohio River, or of a Pennsylvania mountain wagoner, they might have accepted her-at a distance--and made the best of her. But a person from the rank and file of their own Fur Company-it was as though a colonel should marry the daughter of a common soldier in his own regiment: yes, worse, for nothing can equal

"He goes to college in the spring; that the Pronando pride. From that day John will quiet him," said Mrs. Bryden.

"What will he do afterward? Is he to live here? At this end of the world-this jumping-off place?"

"I suppose so; he has always lived here. But he belongs, you know, to the old Philadelphia family of the same name, the Peter Pronandos."

Pronando was simply forgotten-so they said. His mother was dead, so it may have been true. A small sum was settled upon him, and a will was carefully drawn up forever excluding him and the heirs he might have from any share in the estate. John did not appear to mind this, but lived on merrily enough for some years

relatives, and win his way back into the family again."

"He does not know anything about his family," said the colonel's wife.

"Then some one ought to tell him." "Why? Simply for the money? No: let him lead his own life out here, and make his own way," said Mrs. Bryden, warmly.

"What a radical you are, Jane!"

"No, not a radical; but I have seen two or three of the younger Pronandos, of the fourth generation, I mean, and whenever I think of their dead eyes, and lifeless, weary manner, I feel like doing what I can to keep Rast away from them."

"But the boy must live his life, Jane. These very Pronandos whom you describe will probably be sober and staid at fifty: the Pronandos always are. And Rast, after all, is one of them."

"Well, no; less epicureanism, perhaps. It is the solid good things of life that bring the Pronandos back, after they have indulged in youthful wildness: they have no taste for husks."

Then the colonel came in, and, soon after, the sewing circle broke up, Mrs. Cromer and Mrs. Rankin returning to their quarters in the other cottages through the walled snow-paths. The little fort was perched on the brow of the cliff, overlooking the village and harbor; the windows of the stone cottages which formed the officers' quarters commanded an uninterrupted view of blue water in summer, and white ice-fields in winter, as far as the eye could reach. It could hardly have withstood a bombardment; its walls and block-houses, erected as a defense against the Indians, required constant propping and new foundation-work to keep them within the requirements of safety, not to speak of military dignity. But the soldiers had nothing else to do, and, on the whole, the fort looked well, especially from the water, crowning the green height with buttressed majesty. During eight months of the year the officers played chess and checkers, and the men played fox-and-geese. The remain

afterward, until his sweet little wife died; then he seemed to lose his strength suddenly, and soon followed her, leaving this one boy, Erastus, named after the maternal grandfather, with his usual careless disregard of what would be for his advantage. The boy has been brought up by our good chaplain, although he lives with a family down in the village; the doctor has husbanded what money there was carefully, and there is enough to send him through college, and to start him in life in some way. A good education he considered the best investment of all." "In a fresh-water college?" said Mrs. Cromer, raising her eyebrows. Why not, for a fresh-water boy? He ing four months, which comprised all will always live in the West."

"He is so handsome," said Mrs. Rankin, "that he might go Eastward, captivate his

there was of spring, summer, and autumn, were filled full of out-door work and enjoyment; summer visitors came, and the

United States uniform took its conquering | slender, low-voiced Miss Carew, who was place, as usual, among the dancers, at the thirty, but appeared twenty, after the picnics, and on the fast-sailing fishing- manner of slender yellow-white blondes boats which did duty as yachts, skimming who have never possessed any rose-tints or over the clear water in whose depths fish dimples, having always been willowy and could be seen swimming forty feet below. amber-colored. Miss Carew sailed, for a These same fish were caught and eaten- summer's amusement, through the Great the large lake trout, and the delicate white- Lakes of the West; and then returned fish, aristocrat of the fresh-water seas; Eastward with the opinion that they were three-quarters of the population were fish- but so many raw, blank, inland oceans, ermen, and the whole town drew its food without sensations or local coloring from the deep. The business had broad- enough to rouse her. The week on the ened, too, as the Prairie States became island, which was an epoch in Rast's life, more thickly settled, namely, the salting had held for her but languid interest; yet and packing for sale of these fresh-water even the languid work of a master-hand fish. has finish and power, and Rast was melancholy and silent for fifteen days after the enchantress had departed. Then he wrote to her one or two wild letters, and received no answer; then he grew bitter. Then Walters came, with his cadet's deep experience in life, and the youth learned from him, and re-appeared on the surface again with a tinge of cynicism which filled Anne with wonder. For he had never told her the story of the summer; it was almost the only event in his life which she had not shared. But it was not that he feared to tell her, they were as frank with each other as two children; it was because he thought she would not understand it.

Barrels stood on the piers, and brisk agents, with pencils behind their ears, stirred the slow-moving villagers into activity, as the man with a pole stirs up the bears. Fur-bearing animals had had their day; it was now the turn of the creatures of the deep.

"Let us stop at the church-house a moment and see Miss Lois," said Rast, as, dragging the empty sled behind him, he walked by Anne's side through the village street toward the Agency.

"I am afraid I have not time, Rast." "Make it, then. Come, Annet, don't be ill-natured. And, besides, you ought to see that I go there, for I have not called upon Miss Lois this year.

"As this year only began last week, you are not so very far behind," said the girl, smiling. "Why can you not go and see Miss Lois alone?"

"I should be welcome, at any rate; she adores me."

"Does she, indeed!"

She

"Yes, Miss Douglas, she does. pretends otherwise, but that is always the way with women. Oh! I know the world."

"You are only one year older than I am."

"In actual time, perhaps; but twenty years older in knowledge."

"What will you be, then, when you come back from college? An old man?" "By no means; for I shall stay where Iam. But in the mean time you will catch up with me."

Handsome Rast had passed through his novitiate, so he thought. His knowledge of the world was derived partly from Lieutenant Walters, who, although fresh from West Point, was still several years older than young Pronando, and patronized him accordingly, and partly from a

VOL LXIL-No. 368.-15

But it is to conquer him they like," said Tita, looking up from her corner.

66

Hear the child!" said Rast, laughing. "Are you going to conquer, Tita?"

"Yes," said Tita, stroking the cat which shared the corner with her a soft-coated yellow pussy that was generally sleepy and quiet, but which had, nevertheless, at times, extraordinary fits of galloping around in a circle, and tearing the bark from the trees as though she was possessed-an eccentricity of character which the boys attributed to the direct influence of Satan.

Miss Lois lived in the church-house. It was an ugly house; but then, as is often said of a plain woman, "so good!" It did not leak or rattle, or fall down or smoke, or lean or sag, as did most of the