"Miss Forrest, I cannot tell you how I appreciate the honor you have done me in this confidence. It may be the means of my making more than one man happy. One word, where is Celestine now?" "She should be in the dining-room, setting the table for tea. Good-by, then, till tattoo. See him if you can." "Indeed I will," he answered, and bowing over the slender, richly-jewelled hand she so frankly placed in his, he slowly released it, and turned away. "In the dining-room, is she?" muttered Holmes to himself, as he ran lightly through the hall and down the stairs. "If that was not Miss Celestine I saw this moment scurrying in from the direction of the wood-piles out yonder, I'm vastly mistaken, and she was talking with a soldier there. I saw the glint of the sunset on the brasses of his forage-cap. I thought they all had to be at retreat roll-call, but this fellow missed it." Turning at the foot of the stairs, he strode to the rear door, and looked out through the side-light upon the unpicturesqueness of the yards, the coal- and wood-sheds, the rough, unpainted board fences; the dismantled gate, propped in most inebriate style against its bark-covered post, and clinging thereto with but a single hinge. At this half-closed aperture suddenly appeared the mulatto girl, stopped, turned, gave a quick glance at the various back windows of Bedlam, waved her hand to a dim, soldierly form just discernible in the twilight striding toward the northern end of the garrison, then she came scurrying to the door, and burst in, panting. "Ah, Celestine! That you?" asked Holmes, pleasantly. "I thought to find you in the dining-room, and stopped to ask for a glass of water." At sight of him the girl had almost recoiled, but his cheery voice reassured her.