Mrs. Stannard's bonny face showed instant disappointment.
"There's—there's another matter," said Bob, with trouble in his tones.
"I so hoped——" faltered that arch match-maker.
"So did I, Mrs. Stannard," said downright Bob, "but not with charges hanging over my head. First I've got to meet the enemy."
And yet he wished to see and speak with Miriam, who not once had set foot out of doors since the night of the fire, whose sweet face flamed at every recurring thought of that incident, whose self-betrayal covered her with shame and confusion indescribable, who would give years of her young life if she could only escape from Fort Cushing and hide herself a thousand miles away. But not until that stern puritanical father should arrive was leaving to be thought of. A week agone and the tidings of his coming would have filled her with dread; now she heard them with relief. Father coming—and Aunt Agnes! Aunt Agnes, who never before had been west of the Hudson. Aunt Agnes, whose forebears had warred against witchcraft and woodcraft, against village crones and forest children, against helpless old women and stealthy young savages—all without mercy when delivered into their hands! Was it in partial reparation for the rapine, the swindling, and stealing dealt out by her Pilgrim forefathers to the Indian of the East that Aunt Agnes had become the vehement champion of the Indian of the West? President of a famous Peace Society was she, and secretary of the Standish Branch of the Friends of the Red Man, a race whom the original and redoubtable Miles had spitted and skewered and shot without stint or discrimination. And now was Aunt Agnes hastening westward with her brother, to reclaim their one ewe lamb from the wolf pack of the wilds, and incidentally to see for herself something of the haunts and habits of the red brother in whose behalf, these last six months, her voice had been uplifted time and again. It was the year of a great Indian war. The blood of hundreds of our soldiery had been shed, without protest from these of Puritan stock, but they shuddered at thought of reprisals. Aunt Agnes coming to Cushing! Aunt Agnes to meet the colonel and his "red-handed horde of ruthless slayers!"
No wonder the Christmas day that dawned for Miriam Arnold in that stirring Centennial year bade fair to be the gloomiest of her life. Yet who can tell what a day may bring forth?
Sumter came in, cheery and laughing, for the late family breakfast. Guard-mounting was long over, but he had been detained by the colonel.
"It is almost comical," said he, "to see Button's delight in those letters in the New York papers. He's as curious now to know the author of those as he was furious at the supposed author of the others."
"What others?" faltered Miriam Arnold, her eyes filling with strange apprehension, her face visibly paling.
"Some bitter attacks on him that appeared in the Boston and Philadelphia papers about that night surprise of Lone Wolf's village—the one he accused Mr. Lanier of having started."