They had finished their coffee and were just coming forth upon the veranda into the exquisite evening air, and, as bidden by her father, Lilian had just begun to tune her guitar, when across the parade among the men seated along the low front of the barracks there was sudden start, sudden rush, and, from up the line of officers' quarters not many doors away, came agonized cry for help. Archer sprang to his feet and started, but Mrs. Archer, in a paroxysm of fear, thinking only of Indians and treachery, seized him by the arm, clung to and held him. Mrs. Stannard sprang within the hall and back with Archer's revolver which, without a word, she thrust into his hand. Then all three together started, for while fifty men came tearing headlong across the sandy level, making straight for the adjutant's quarters, Lilian, their little Lilian--the silent, sad-eyed, anxious child of the days and days gone by--heading everybody, was flying like a white-winged bird, straight along the line, and when the father reached her she had thrown herself upon a heap of burning, smouldering bedding, thrashing it with a wet blanket snatched from the olla, and then, with her own fair, white hands, was beating out the few sparks that remained about the sleeve and shoulder of a soaked and dishevelled gown, and brushing others from the hair and face of an unheroic, swathed and dripping figure--Harold Willett in the midst of the wreck of his cot, while Blitz, the striker, aided by Wettstein and the doctor's man, were stamping and swearing and tearing things to bits in the effort to down other incipient blazes. Between them they had dragged Willett from the midst of the flames and drenched him with a cataract from the olla. The rush of the men from the barracks made short work of the fire, but when Mrs. Archer and Mrs. Stannard, with throbbing hearts, bent over the scorched and smoking ruin on the south porch, a tousled brown head, with ghastly face, was clasped in Lilian's arms, pillowed on Lilian's fair, white bosom. Willett had fainted from fright, pain and reaction, and the unheroic, untried, unfearing girl had blistered her own fair hands, her own soft, rounded, clasping arms, yet saw and felt nothing but dread for his suffering and joy for his safety. Even the mother for a moment could not take her rescued darling from that fond, fearless, impassioned embrace. All in that desperate instant the veil of virgin shame had burned away. In the fierce heat and shock and peril the latent love force had burst its bonds, the budding lily had blossomed into womanhood.