But this swift and brilliant panorama did not long delay his musing fancy. A dull smart like that of a healing wound drew his mind to a succession of scenes on the frontier. He dwelt with that strange fascination which belongs to the memory of hardships--and which we are all too apt to mistake for regret--upon his life of toil and danger in the wide desolation of the West. There he met, one horrible winter, the sister-in-law of a brother captain, a tall, languid, ill-nourished girl of mature years, with tender blue eyes and a taste for Byron. She had no home and no relatives in the world except her sister, Mrs. Keefe, whom she had followed into the wilderness. She was a heavy burden on the scanty resources of poor Keefe, but he made her cordially welcome like the hearty soldier that he was. She was the only unmarried white woman within a hundred miles, and the mercury ranged from zero to -20 degrees all winter. In the spring, she and Farnham were married; he seemed to have lost the sense of there being any other women in the world, and he took her, as one instinctively takes to dinner the last lady remaining in a drawing-room, without special orders. He had had the consolation of reflecting that he made her perfectly proud and happy every day of her life that was left. Before the autumn ended, she died, on a forced march one day, when the air was glittering with alkali, and the fierce sun seemed to wither the dismal plain like the vengeance of heaven. Though Farnham was even then one of the richest men in the army, so rigid are the rules imposed upon our service, by the economy of an ignorant demagogy, that no transportation could be had to supply this sick lady with the ordinary conveniences of life, and she died in his arms, on the hot prairie, in the shade of an overloaded baggage wagon. He mourned her with the passing grief one gives to a comrade fallen on the field of honor. Often since he left the army, he reproached himself for not have grieved for her more deeply. "Poor Nellie," he would sometimes say, "how she would have enjoyed this house, if she had lived to possess it." But he never had that feeling of widowhood known to those whose lives have been torn in two. IV. PROTECTOR AND PROTEGEE. A few days later, Mr. Farnham attended a meeting of the library board, and presented the name of Miss Matchin as a candidate for a subordinate place in the library. There were several such positions, requiring no special education or training, the duties of which could be as well filled by Miss Maud as by any one else. She had sent several strong letters of recommendation to the board, from prominent citizens who knew and respected her father, for when Maud informed him of her new ambition, Matchin entered heartily into the affair, and bestirred himself to use what credit he had in the ward to assist her.