submitting to be shunned by him; nay, taking the initiative in declining for a brief space to hold intercourse with him. She was

the first to hail a sign of amendment; she was extravagantly proud of his promotion, insisting that he would never stop till he got a commission, which would be no more than his due, though she must give up her washing, and it would be as well that Lawrie had served his time before that day came round.

The process of retrogression, even when it reached its extremity, did not shake Jenny's fidelity; instead, it knit her so closely to her brother that she ceased to protest against his folly. Was it a time to be picking out holes in his coat and pointing to his errors, when the poor lad was in trouble and brought to so sorry a pass that he needed every grain of love to fight for him, cleave to him, and, if it were yet possible, save him?

Jenny would leave Lawrie to play the cautious, cold-hearted, judicial part-to draw back in case of incurring reflected blame, to stand aloof, though with a decent show of reluctance to join in the chorus of blame. Neither did Jenny greatly censure her husband for his conduct. It belonged to the poor

man's nature, as she had known when she married him; and so long as he did not propose to stop her in the most desperate exertions she might undertake on her brother's behalf, according to the original bargain between the pair, honest Jenny could not see that she had any title to sit upon her husband.

It might have been otherwise if Jenny's conviction of her husband's fulfilling his bargain had been shaken, or if she had guessed that the great secret of her independence lay in the meanness, rather than in the phlegmatic magnanimity of the man she had married, that he dreaded to offend her high spirit mortally, lest he should lose the constant harvest of her skilled work which found many channels of outlet. Jenny never dreamt of a separate purse, neither would the scapegrace Will have consented to touch a farthing of her wages, so long as he could work for his own hand.

Jenny moved heaven and earth to deliver her brother from the barbarous infliction of the lash. She knew well that it would be the death of his moral nature, the brand that would enter his soul, even if his high-strung physical system recovered from the shock it

would receive. If it had been possible to administer the punishment vicariously, without Will's knowledge, she could have been wrought up to bare her brave shoulders like the Russian women to the knout, and like another Godiva have faced ignominy, so that the victim, who was her own flesh and blood, her darling since her early girlhood, might be permitted to go free. That resource was impossible. All that Jenny could do, and she had only a few days to do it in, was to wander day and night, praying for a commutation of the sentence. She appealed here and urged there. She worked upon the chaplain to draw up a petition for her. She vexed the souls of men with her sometimes speechless, but never-failing importunity, and the drytongued anguish of her despair. She declined to be repulsed, though she had been rather a proud little woman in her better days. She won over gentle, illogical, enthusiastic ladies to espouse her cause, and to plague their husbands never to mind precedents, not even justice, but for dear mercy's sake to grant Jenny Thwaite's prayer. She was the most careful washer and clear-starcher, the best darner, the nicest sewer of plain seam, the

most trustworthy nurse on a pinch they had ever found. The whole men would fare the worse, and every officer's household be in straits, if they drove Jenny beside herself. Why, the poor woman must go mad; she would die on their hands, and they would have two ruined lives, two deaths at their door. Was that what their stupid, stubborn bondage to form wanted? Colonel Bell was not a bit the worse of the insult. He had not so much as a scratch on the face; and was a poor fellow to be treated like a brute, because, for once in his life, he had forgotten himself, and behaved like a baby? Did not Bertie or Charlie throw his toys at anyone who came in his way-at papa himself, when the child was in a rage? Don't speak to the ladies of the demoralizing effect on the other soldiers, the loss of prestige where the rule of the officers was concerned, of mutiny, and insurrection, and chaos come again. No such horrors ensued in the nursery from making as little as possible of Bertie or Charlie's naughtiness, and leaving the child to come to himself.

Jenny wound up her vehement representations by what sounded in the circumstances

like wild romances, of the Thwaites having grand connections, with the likelihood that the family would rise in the world some day, when certainly the officers would be sorry for the cruel, base punishment they had inflicted. These unreasonable and passionate statements on the whole did harm to the woman's suit. Nobody had time to ask or give confirmatory details of the improbable story, which appeared to rest on no foundation, unless it were a little vapouring of Will in his cups, and some wary conceited bragging on the part of his brother-in-law. It was either a credulous delusion or a pure invention. It actually impaired the respectability of the pleader.

In the meantime, Jenny had no encouragement from those most interested in the affair.

'It is of no use, Jenny,' said her husband with ostentatious dismalness, doing little to second her in her frantic exertions.

'Never mind, Jen,' said poor Will, when she visited him. It will soon be over,' turning away to hide a shuddering recoil. 'Everything will soon be over, and you'll be well rid of a rascal who has only been a trial and grief to you.'