CATHARINE THE ROSE
"HE held her hands and looked steadfastly into her eyes.
"You would not hold me back, Kate?"
The eyes which looked bravely at him were full of tears; but the girl shook the drops from her long lashes as she threw back her head, and spoke with unfaltering lips.
"I would hold no man back from his duty; least of all the man I love."
In a moment his arm was about her. The troth plight, spoken amid the clang of arms and the rattle of musketry, was but three days old; and the strange sweetness of it had penetrated the life of the English Captain in a fashion which he had no skill to analyse. But in these stern days there was little scope for the sweetness of spoken love; and even the minutes snatched from the pressing needs of garrison life were few and far between.
But Hart had volunteered the second time for a service of extra peril, and he had come to speak a
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