"We should welcome you, sir," spoke the colonel courteously. "May I speak to you a moment, captain?" Clifford rose instantly. "It hath come then?" he asked quietly. "Yes," answered the colonel huskily. "It was hard to break in upon your mirth, but I thought you would prefer to have me tell you than to hear it from another." "You are most kind, sir." The youth's voice trembled ever so little. "We were too merry, my cousin. 'Against ill chances men are ever merry. But heaviness foreruns the good event.'" His tones were steady as he finished the quotation, and he added: "I am ready at any time." But at this Peggy uttered a cry. "Now? Oh, that would be inhuman! Surely not now?" "Nay," said Colonel Dayton, alarmed by her paleness. "'Tis not as you think, child. He goes to the guard-house now. The sentence will not be carried out until to-morrow morning." "'Tis so sudden," she protested piteously. "Nay, Peggy, it hath been too long deferred," demurred Clifford. "'Tis well to have the anxiety and suspense over. You must not give way." "But what can I do, Clifford? Thee has no one but me to do for thee. How can I comfort thee?" "Dear little cousin," he said softly, "you have done much already. Think what these last weeks would have been for me had you not stayed here. Be brave a little longer. The colonel will let me see you again." "Yes," said Colonel Dayton briefly. And Peggy was left alone. Alone! With wide, unseeing eyes she stared at a patch of green grass in front of her where ox-eyed daisies grew like golden stars. Alone! Harriet had not come, as Peggy had been hoping she would. And her father! Could he not get leave? Alone! Alone! What comfort could she, a mere girl, be to her cousin in this trying hour? Far afield the milkweed nodded a soft welcome to the butterflies winging, like flying flowers, over the fields. A bumblebee droned drowsily near, humming his song to unheeding ears. Where the tall pine trees of the forest met the sky argosies of clouds spread their portly sails along the blue. In the heat of the July morning Peggy sat shaking like a leaf. "I must be brave," she told herself again and again. "He hath no one here but me. I must be Harriet and Cousin William both to him. I must be of comfort to him." Long she sat there under the tree trying to pull herself together, but after a while she rose and made her way into the house. It was well on toward the end of the afternoon when Colonel Dayton came to her. "Your cousin wishes to see you, child," he said pityingly. "He bears up well, but I need not say to you that he will need all his fortitude to go through with this ordeal." "I shall not fail him, friend," said Peggy with quivering lips. "I am all of kith or kin that is near him. I shall not fail." But the maiden had need of all her resolution when she entered the guard-house where Clifford was, for he was most despondent.