He looked after her helplessly as she went into the house, dazed by the consciousness that he had lost her forever. He knew then that she had never forgotten his failure to go up-stream with Ronald the night the Indians had been at Lee's, even though she had asked him to forgive her.
"I have lost her," he said to himself, over and over again,—"I have lost her." Second thought convinced him that he had had no chance from the beginning—since the night he leaned on his musket in the shelter of the Fort; confused past the power of action, when the Ensign asked for volunteers.
"Want to go over, Rob?" It was Mackenzie who asked the question, and Forsyth gladly welcomed the respite from his torturing thoughts.
At the Fort all was changed, for the order had been read that morning on parade, and the men stood about in little groups earnestly discussing it. Mrs. Franklin and Katherine were on the porch at the Lieutenant's, and Robert went there, feeling that their society would be more bearable than that of the men.
"If we go," said Katherine, "there'll be very little we can take with us."
"If we go!" snapped Mrs. Franklin. "Do you think for a minute we're not going? A soldier's first duty is to obey orders!"
Katherine turned a shade paler as she welcomed Forsyth. "Have you packed your belongings?" she asked.
"Not yet," he answered, with a hollow laugh. The impending danger was obscured, in his mind, by something of infinitely more moment. "When do we start?" he inquired of Mrs. Franklin.
"I don't know—Wallace hasn't decided. But we'll start when he says we will, and nobody need think we won't!"