Margaret McKenzie had been born at Chicago, but having lost her mother at an early age, her father, profiting by one of his periodical visits to New York, had taken her with him for the purpose of receiving such an education as would enable her not only to grace a drawing-room, and make her a companion to a man of sense and refinement, but to fit her for those more domestic duties which the uncertain character of so secluded a life might occasionally render necessary, and where luxury and education alone were insufficient to a trading husband's views of happiness. After five years' absence, she had returned to Chicago, a girl of strong mind, warm affection, without the slightest affectation, and altogether so adapted in manner and education--for she eminently combined the useful with the ornamental--that her father was delighted with her, not less for the proficiency she had made in all that gives value to society, but because of the utter absence of all appearance of regret in abandoning the gay and enlivening scenes of the fascinating capital, in which she had spent so many years, for the still, dull monotony of the primeval forest in which her childhood had been passed. But here she was not doomed to "waste her sweetness on the desert air." There were only two officers in the garrison, besides Captain Headley, when Miss McKenzie returned to her native wilds--Doctor Von Voltenberg and Lieut. Elmsley. The third who made up the number of those attached to the company had a few days previously been shot and scalped by a party of Indians near Hardscrabble, while on his return to the fort from shooting the hen, or English grouse, of the prairie. His place was supplied by Ensign Ronayne, who had joined the garrison a few days after. Lieutenant Elmsley, captivated by the accomplishments and amiability of the fascinating Margaret, had offered her his heart and hand, and obtained her unreluctant promise speedily to share his barrack room, some twenty feet by twelve in dimensions. Meanwhile, in order to prove to him how well she was fitted to be a soldier's wife, not an article of food was ever placed before her father's almost constant visitors that did not in some measure pass under her supervision. Poor would have been the preparation of the grosser viands had not her directing voice presided; and, as for the tarts, and puddings, and custards, _et hoc genus omne_, no one who tasted could doubt that no hands but her own had operated in the fabrication; and the currant, the cranberry, the strawberry jelly, the peach, the plum, and the cherry preserve, and the currant and gooseberry wine! What, in the name of all that is delicate in gastronomy, could be more delicious or exhibit greater perfection of taste! So thought Von Voltenberg. He was in raptures. Such a wife, he thought, was all he wanted to his comfort; he could have dispensed, if necessary, with the more intellectual portions of the worth of Margaret McKenzie, but his