place, against a United States surgeon with the best of Boston behind
him.'

'I wish you would tell me that every day, Aunt Sarah,' was the reply I
received. It set me musing, but I could make nothing of it. Troubled
without knowing why, I suggested to Archie that he should endeavor to
interest our surgeon in the fort gayety; there was something for every
night in the merry little circle,--games, suppers, tableaux, music,
theatricals, readings, and the like.

'Why, he's in the thick of it already, Aunt Sarah,' said my nephew.
'He's devoting himself to Miss Augusta; she sings "The Harp that
once--" to him every night.'

('The Harp that once through Tara's Halls', was Miss Augusta's
dress-parade song. The Major's quarters not being as large as the
halls aforesaid, the melody was somewhat overpowering.)

'O, does she?' I thought, not without a shade of vexation. But the
vague anxiety vanished.

The real spring came at last,--the rapid, vivid spring of Mackinac.
Almost in a day the ice moved out, the snows melted, and the northern
wild-flowers appeared in the sheltered glens. Lessons were at an end,
for my scholar was away in the green woods. Sometimes she brought me a
bunch of flowers, but I seldom saw her; my wild bird had flown back to
the forest. When the ground was dry and the pine droppings warmed by
the sun, I, too, ventured abroad. One day, wandering as far as the
Arched Rock, I found the surgeon there, and together we sat down to
rest under the trees, looking off over the blue water flecked with