The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-03-05

(Ccnttnued.l
 Very well, ,.-> nap asked mo for permission to try his chance long ago-before came west to Laramie. assigned him to bring her through t' me He was distracted at his failure to do so. He has been out with parties all the summer searching for you both and has not been back at Laramie more than ten days. Oh. we all knew why you did not come back to the set dement's. When we came in he guess ed all that you know. He knew that all the world would talk. And, like a man. he asked the right to silence all that talk forever"
 And she agreed? Ellen Meriwether accepted him on such terms"
 ''It is arranged" said he, not an- swering me directly, "and it removes at once all necessity for any other ar engagement. As for you. you disappear. It will be announced all through the army that she and Lieutenant Belknap were married at Leavenworth before they started west and that it was they two and not you and my daughter who were lost"
 And Belknap was content to do this?- I unused. "He would do this after Ellen told him that she loved me"
 ''Stopw thundered Colonel Meriweth- CT. 'I have told you all that is ueees- sary. I will add that he said to me. like the gentleman he is. that in case my daughter asked it he would marry her and leave her at once, until she of her own free will asked him to re- turn. There is abundant opportunity for swift changes in the army. What seems to you absurd will work out in perfectly practical fashion"
 "Yes." said I, ''in fashion perfectly practical for the ruin of her life. You may leave mine out of the question"
 '.I do, sir," was his icy reply. "She told you to your face, and in my hear ing. that you had deceived her, that you must go"
 "Yes." I said. duly. 'T did deceive her. and there is no punishment on earth great enough to give me for that except to have no word from her!''
 You are to go at once. l put if beyond you to understand Belknap's conduct in this matter"
 He is a gentleman" I said, "anf fit to love her. I think none of u needs praise or blame for that"
 He choked up. She's my girl" h, said. "Yes. all my boys in the arm. love her-there isn't one of them tha wouldn't be proud to marry her on an. terms she would lay down. And there isn't man in the army. married or single, that wouldn't challenge you if you breathed a word of what has gone between you and her"
 It seemed to me so unspeakably sad, so incredible, that one should be so unbelievably underestimated.
 ''Now, finally" resumed Colonel Meri- wether. after time. ceasing his walk ing up and down, "1 must close up what remains between you and me. My daughter said to me that you want ed to see me on some business matter. Of course you had some reason for coming out here"
 That was my only reason for com ing" rejoined. "I wanted to see you upon an important business matter was sent here by the last message my father gave any one-by the last words he spoke in his life. He told me ] should come to you"
 Well. well. if you have any favor to ask of me out with it, and let us end it all at one sitting"
 "Sir," I said, "I would see you damned forever before I would ask a crust or cup of water of you, though I were starving and burning. I have heard enough"
 'Orderlyr' he called out. 'Show this man to the gate"
 It was at last borne in upon me that I must leave without any word from Ellen. She was hedged about by all the stern and cold machinery of an army post, out of whose calculations was left as much as though belonged to a different world. I cannot express what this meant for me. For weeks now, for months, indeed, we two had been together each hour of the day I had come to expect her greeting in the morning, to turn to her a thousand times in the day with some query 0: answer I had made no plan from which she was absent. I had come to accept myself with her as fit part of an appointed and happy scheme. Now in a twinkling, all that had been sub- verted.
 1t was thus that I, dulled, bereft; I, having lived, now dead; I, late free, now bound again, turned away sullen- ly and began my journey back to the life I had known before I met her. As passed east by the Denver stage I met hurrying throngs always coming westward, a wavelike migration of population now even denser than it shad been the preceding spring. They came on, a vast, continuous stream of hope. confidence and youth. l, who stemmed that current, alone was un, like 1t in all waZg