For a minute, as dazed as he, I stared blankly at the little figure with the white flag. Then bewilderment gave place before the call to action, and it seemed to me that I saw Sally there in Miss Matoaca, as I had seen her in the rising moon over the clipped yew, and in the whirlpool of the stock market. Leaving my place at the General's side, I descended the steps at a bound, and made my way through the jostling, noisy crowd to the little lady in its midst. "Miss Matoaca!" I said. For the first time her eyes left the sky, and as she looked down, the consciousness of her situation entered into her strained bright eyes. Her composure was lost in a birdlike, palpitating movement of terror. "I--I am going as far as the Square, Mr. Starr," she replied, as if she were repeating by rote a phrase in a strange tongue. At my approach the ridicule, somewhat subdued by the sense of her helplessness, broke suddenly loose. Bending over I offered her my arm, my head still uncovered. As the hand holding the white flag drooped from exhaustion, I took it, with the banner, into my own. "Then I'll go with you, Miss Matoaca," I responded. We started on, took a few measured paces in the line of march, and then her strength failing her, she sank back, with a pathetic moan of weariness, into my arms. Lifting her like a child I carried her out of the street and up the steps into the General's office. Turning at a touch as I entered the room, I saw that Sally was at my side. "I've sent for Dr. Theophilus," she said. "There, put her on the lounge." Kneeling on the floor she began bathing Miss Matoaca's forehead with water which somebody had brought. The General, his eyes very red and bloodshot and his lower lip fallen into a senile droop, was trying vainly to fan her with his pocket-handkerchief. "We have always feared this would happen," said Sally, very quiet and pale. "She was talking to me yesterday about her heart," returned the General, "and I didn't know what she meant." He bent over, fanning her more violently with his silk handkerchief, and on the lounge beneath, Miss Matoaca lay, very prim and maidenly, with her skirt folded modestly about her ankles. Dr. Theophilus, coming in with the messenger, bent over her for a long minute. "I always thought her sense of honour would kill her," he said at last as he looked up. CHAPTER XIX SHOWS THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE A week after Miss Matoaca's funeral, Sally met me in one of the secluded streets by the Capitol Square, and we walked slowly up and down for an hour in the November sunshine. In her black clothes she appeared to have bloomed into a brighter beauty, a richer colour. "Why can't I believe, Sally, that you will really marry me a week from to-day?" "A week from to-day. Just you and I in old Saint John's." "And Miss Mitty, will she not come with you?"