An Apache Princess

Aunt Janet, therefore, had some reason for doubting the report of Mrs.

Bridger. It was so unlike Angela to be so very late returning,

although, now that Mrs. Bridger had mentioned it, she, too, remembered

hearing the rapid thud of Punch's galloping hoofs homeward bound, as

was she, at 5.45. Yet, barely five minutes thereafter, Angela, who

usually spent half an hour splashing in her tub, appeared full

panoplied, apparently, at the head of the stairs upon her aunt's

arrival, and was even now somewhere down the row, hobnobbing with Kate

Sanders. That Lieutenant Blakely should have missed retreat roll-call

was in itself no very serious matter. "Slept through at his quarters,

perhaps," said Plume. "He'll turn up in time for dinner." In fine the

major's indifference struck the captain as an evidence of official

weakness, reprehensible in a commander charged with the discipline of

a force on hostile soil. What Wren intended was that Plume should be

impressed by his formal word and manner, and direct the adjutant to

look up the derelict instanter. As no such action was taken, however,

he felt it due to himself to speak again. A just man was Wren, and

faithful to the core in his own discharge of duty. What he could not

abide was negligence on part of officer or man, on part of superior or

inferior, and he sought to "stiffen" Plume forthwith.

"If he isn't in his quarters, shall I send a party out in search,

sir?"

"Who? Blakely? Dear, no, Wren! What for?" returned the post commander,

obviously nettled. "I fancy he'll not thank you for even searching his

quarters. You may stumble over his big museum in the dark and smash

things. No, let him alone. If he isn't here for dinner, I'll 'tend to

it myself."

And so, rebuffed, as it happened, by an officer much his inferior in

point of experience and somewhat in years, Wren silently and stiffly

saluted and turned away. Virtually he had been given to understand

that his suggestion was impertinent. He reached his quarters,

therefore, in no pleasant mood, and found his sister waiting for him

with Duty in her clear and shining eyes.

A woman of many a noble trait was Janet Wren,--a woman who had done a

world of good to those in sickness, sorrow, or other adversity, a

woman of boundless faith in herself and her opinions, but not too much

hope or charity for others. The blood of the Scotch Covenanters was

in her veins, for her mother had been born and bred in the shadow of

the kirk and lived and died in the shadow of the cross. A woman with a

mission was Janet, and one who went at it unflinchingly. She had loved

her brother always, yet disapproved his marriage to so young and

unformed a woman as was his wife. Later, she had deprecated from the

start the soldier spirit, fierce in his Highland blood, that tore him

from the teachings of their gentle mother and her beloved meenister,

took him from his fair young wife when most she needed him and sent

him straightway into the ranks of the one Highland regiment in the

Union Army at the outbreak of the Civil War. His gallant colonel fell

at First Bull Run, and Sergeant Wren fought over his body to the

fervent admiration of the Southerners who captured both. The first War

Secretary, mourning a beloved brother and grateful to his defender,

commissioned the latter in the regulars at once and, on his return

from Libby, Wren joined the army as a first lieutenant. With genuine

Scottish thrift, his slender pay had been hoarded for him, and his now

motherless little one, by that devoted sister, and when, a captain at

the close of the war, he came to clasp his daughter to his heart, he

found himself possessed of a few hundreds more than fell to the lot of

most of his associates. It was then that Janet, motherless herself,

had stepped into the management of her brother's army home, and sought

to dominate in that as she had in everything else from early girlhood.

Wren loved her fondly, but he, too, had a will. They had many a

clash. It was this, indeed, that led to Angela's going so early to an

Eastern school. We are all paragons of wisdom in the management of

other people's children. It is in dealing with our own our limitations

are so obvious. Fond as she had become of Angela's sweet young mother,

it must be owned that whom Janet loved in this way she often

chastened. Neighbors swore it was not grief, nor illness, half so much

as sister-in-law, that wore the gentle spirit to the snapping-point.

The great strong heart of the soldier was well-nigh broken at his

loss, and Janet, who had never seen him shed a tear since early

boyhood, stood for once, at least, in awe and trembling at sight of

his awful grief. Time and nature played their part and brought him,

gradually, resignation, but never genuine solace. He turned to little

Angela with almost passionate love and tenderness. He would, mayhap,

have spoiled her had not frontier service kept him so much afield that

it was Janet who really reared her,--but not according to the strict

letter of her law. Wren knew well what that was and forbade.