She glanced mechanically toward the card rack, and saw there another letter in the handwriting of her brother--a letter that had come in the morning's mail and had been stuck up there, and in the excitement of the hour had been neglected or forgotten. She seized it eagerly and tore it open, wondering what could have urged Sylvan to write so soon after his last letter. It was dated three weeks later than the one she had received only the day previous, the first one having, no doubt, been delayed somewhere along the uncertain route. In this letter Sylvan complained that he had not received a word from his dear sister since leaving Governor's Island, and mentioned that he himself had written all along the line of march and three times since the arrival of his regiment at Fort Farthermost. But he admitted, also, that the mails beyond the regular United States mail roads were very uncertain and irregular. Then he came to the object of this particular epistle. "It is, my dear Cora, to tell you," he wrote, "that if you should still be resolved to come out and join me here, an opportunity for your safe conduct will be offered you this autumn which may never occur again. Our senior captain--Captain Neville, Company A--has been absent on leave for several months. So he did not come out here with the regiment. His leave expires on the 30th of November. He will be obliged to start in the latter part of October in order to have time enough to accomplish the tedious journey by wagon from Leavenworth to Fort Farthermost, which is, as I believe I told you, in the southern part of the Indian Reserve, bordering on Texas. He is to bring his wife with him. "But our colonel thinks it is I who want you, and, moreover, I who need you; for he says that, next to a wife, a sister is the best safeguard a young officer can have out in these frontier forts, and he gave me the address of Captain Neville and advised me to write to him and ask him and his wife to take charge of my sister on the route. "And then, dear, he went further than that. He took my letter after I had written it, and inclosed it in one from himself. So now, my dear, all you have to do is to go to Washington, call on Mrs. Neville, at Brown's Hotel, Pennsylvania Avenue, and send up your card. She will expect you. Then you must hold yourself in readiness to start when the captain and his wife do." Cora had no time to indulge in reverie. She must be up and doing. Her luggage had long been stored in the freight house of the North End railway station, and her traveling bags had been packed the day before. The servants knew she was going out to join her brother, though they did not know that her grandfather had discarded her. She had very little to do for herself on that day, but she resolved to do all that she could for the comfort of her grandfather before she should leave the house forever.