"Dying, she so told me. And, 'Yellow Hair,' she gasped, 'is quite a witch!' And then she died between my arms." "I am no witch," she whispered. "Nor was the Little Maid of Askalege. Both of you, I think, saw at times things that we others can not perceive until they happen;--the shadow of events to come." "Yes." After a silence: "Have you, perhaps, discovered other shadows since we last met, Penelope?" "Yes; shadows." "What coming event cast them?" After a long pause: "Will it make his mind more tranquil if I tell him?" she murmured to herself; and I saw her dark eyes fixed absently on the dusty ray of sunlight slanting athwart the room. Then she looked up at me; blushed to her hair: "I saw children--with _yellow_ hair--and _your_ eyes----" "With _your_ hair!" "And _your_ eyes--John Drogue--John Drogue----" The stillness of Paradise grew all around us, filling my soul with a great and heavenly silence. We could not die--we two who stood here so closely clasped--until this vision had been fulfilled. And so, presently, her hands fell into mine, and our lips joined slowly, and rested. We said no word. I left her standing there in the golden twilight of the curtains, and got to my saddle,--God knows how,--and rode away beside the quiet river to the certain destiny that no man ever can hope to hinder or escape. CHAPTER XXXI "IN THE VALLEY" On the 24th of June, 1777, Major General Lord Stirling had disobeyed the orders of His Excellency; and, in consequence, his flank was turned, he lost two guns and 150 men.[44] [Footnote 44: The British account makes it three guns and 200 men.] It is the only military mistake that my Lord Stirling ever made; the only lesson he ever had to learn in military judgment and obedience. I was of his family for three years,--serving as one of his secretaries and aids-de-camp. I was present at the battle of Brandywine; I served under him at Germantown in the fog, and at Monmouth; and never doubted that my Lord Stirling was a fine and capable and knightly soldier, if not possibly a great one. Yet, perhaps, there was only one great soldier in that long and bloody war of the American Revolution. I need not name His Excellency. * * * * * For nearly three years, as I say, I served as a member of Lord Stirling's military family. The lights and shadows of those days of fire and ice, of plenty and starvation, of joy and despair, of monstrous and incredible effort, and of paralyzing inaction, are known now to all. And the end is not yet--nor, I fear, very near to a finish. But we all await our nation's destiny with confidence, I think;--and our own fate with composure.