Thus the continued calm of her life was akin to the quiet languors of the sweet summer evening so mutely reddening in the west, so softly changing to the azure and silver of twilight, so splendid in the vast diffusive radiance of the soundless moon. All the growths were as speechless. The rose was full of the voiceless dew. What need of words when the magnolia buds burst into bloom without a rustle. With a placid heart she watched the echoless march of the constellations. The daily brightening of the sumptuous season, the vivid presentment of the great pageant of the distant mountains glowed noiselessly. Amidst this encompassing hush, in suave content she thought out her inconceivable, unexpressed thoughts, with a smile in her eyes and the seal of eternal silence on her lips. For his behest was a sacred charge,--and she did not know,--she never knew! The evidence on which Baynell had been convicted and which had seemed so conclusive to the general court-martial, present during the testimony of the deaf-mute and its subsequent unwilling confirmation by the other witnesses for the defence, was not so decisive on a calm revision of the papers. The doubt remained as to how much he could be presumed to understand from the peculiar methods of the dumb child's disclosure and the scattered haphazard comments of the household. The circumstances were deemed by the reviewing authorities extra hazardous, difficult, and peculiar. The matter hung for a time in abeyance, but at last the court was ordered to reconvene for the rectification of certain irregularities in its proceedings, and for the reconsideration of its action in this case. The interval of time which had elapsed, with its proclivity to annul the effects of surprise and the first convincing force of a definite and irrefutable testimony, had served to foster doubt, not of the fact itself, but as to Baynell's comprehension of it. Perhaps the incredulity obviously entertained in high quarters rendered certain members of the court-martial less sure of the justifiability of their own conclusions. The maturer deliberation of the body accomplished the amendment of those points in the record which had challenged criticism, and the ripened judgment exercised in the reconsideration was manifested in such modifications of the view of the evidence adduced that, although several members still adhered to the earlier findings, the strength of the opposing opinion was so recruited that a majority of the number concurred in it, and the vote resulted in an acquittal.