Three years have come and gone since the forge was built, and the three misguided patriots, still loyal to their vow and to the thirty-three stars on their dear old flag, are sitting together in the fair sunlight of a Sabbath morning on the steps of the golden mill. Tumbler the bear, very shaggy and faded as to his mangy coat, is sleeping comfortably on the dusty path that winds away to the house. Coleman\'s tawny and curly beard and the black hair on Bromley\'s face have grown long and thick, and the down which beforetime was on Philip\'s lip and chin now flares out from his neck and jaws like a weak red flame. Philip sits a little apart from the others, with the telescope in its leathern case strapped on his back, and there is a look of sadness in his face and in his wandering, downcast eyes.

Three years have wrought great changes in the plateau. The harvests have been abundant, and at a little distance from where the men sit purple grapes hang in great clusters from the vines which have been grown from cuttings of that solitary plant which overhung the branch on the July day when they first came down its bank with the captain of the troopers and Andy the guide.

The building of the mill has been a work of time, and it is not yet a month since Bromley emptied the first yellow grist into the flaring hopper. Two long years were spent in shaping the upper and the nether stones, and the new mill was rightly called "golden," for five thousand guineas from the mints of George the Fourth and good Queen Vic. were melted in the forge and beaten into straps and bolts and rings and bands for the wooden machinery. Gold glistens in the joints of the dripping-wheel, and gleams in the darkness at the bottom of the hopper, where the half of a priceless cavalry boot-leg distributes the corn between the grinding-stones. The hopper itself is rimmed with gold, and the circular wooden box, rough hewn, that covers the stones is bolted and belted with the metal elsewhere called precious; and from the half-roof of oak shingles to the slab floor, gold without stint enriches and solidifies the structure. It plates the handle and caps the top of the pole that shifts the water on to the wheel, and the half-door which shuts out Tumbler the bear swings on golden hinges and shuts with a golden hasp.

THE GOLDEN MILL.
THE GOLDEN MILL.

Healthy living and abundance of food have rounded the lusty brown limbs of the three soldiers and charged their veins with good red blood; but alas! in the midst of the abundance of nature and the opulence of the golden mill, by reason of their tattered and scant covering they are pitiful objects to look upon as they sit together in the sunlight. The smart uniforms with yellow facings are gone, and the long cavalry boots, and the jaunty caps with cross-sabers above the flat vizors; and so little remains of their former clothing that they might almost blush in the presence of the bear.

Lieutenant Coleman has some rags of blue flannel hanging about his broad shoulders, which flutter in the soft wind where they are not gathered under the waistband of a pair of new and badly made canvas trousers having the letters "U.S." half lost in the clumsy seam of the right leg and a great "A" on the back, which sufficiently indicates that they have been made from the stiff cloth of the tent called "A," and that, if required, they could easily stand alone. Such as they are, these trousers, on account of their newness and great durability, seem to be the pride of the colony. They are certainly much smarter than Philip\'s, which are open with rents and patched with rags of various shades of blue, and tied about his legs with strings, and finally hung from his bare, tanned shoulders, under the telescope, by a single strip of canvas.

All three of the men have hard, bare feet, and the tunic or gown of faded blue cloth which hangs from Bromley\'s neck shows by its age that the overcoat-capes which were sacrificed to make it were sacrificed long ago. This what-you-may-call-it is girded in at the waist by a coil of young grape-vine covered with tender green leaves, and fringed at bottom with mingled tatters of blue cloth and old yellow lining. And this completes the costume of the dignified corporal who enlisted from Harvard in his junior year, except some ends of trousers which hang about his knees like embroidered pantalets.

With all their poverty of apparel, the persons of the three soldiers, and their clothing as far as practicable, are sweet and clean, which shows that at least two of them have lost none of that pride which prompted them to stay on the mountain, and which still keeps up their courage in the autumn of the good year \'69. And now let us see what it is that ails Philip.

Many entries in the diary for the fifth summer on the mountain, which is just over, indicate that the conduct of Philip was shrouded in an atmosphere of mystery which his companions vainly tried to penetrate. So early as March 12, 1869, we find it recorded:


"Philip spends all his unemployed time in observations with the telescope."


In the following April and May, entries touching on this subject are most frequent, and Lieutenant Coleman and George Bromley have many conversations about Welton\'s peculiar conduct, and record many evidences of a state of mind which causes them much annoyance and some amusement.


"May 12. Requested Philip to remove one of the bee gums to the new bench. Instead of complying with my request, he plugged the holes with grass, removed the stone and board from the top, and emptied a wooden bowl of lye into the hive, destroying both swarm and honey. After this act of vandalism he entered the house, took down the telescope, and, slinging it over his shoulder, walked away in the direction of the point of rocks, whistling a merry tune as he went."


At another time he was asked to set the Slow-John in motion to crack a mess of hominy, and instead of spreading the corn on the rock he covered that receptacle with a layer of eggs, and hung the bucket on the long arm of the lever.

Such evidences of a profound absence of mind were constantly occurring; and if they were not indications of his desire to return to the world, his secret observations with the telescope made it plain enough that he was absorbed in events outside the borders of Sherman Territory. If questioned, he assigned all sorts of imaginary reasons for his conduct, and at the same time he held himself more and more aloof from his companions, to wander about the plateau alone.

During the previous winter, Philip had reported that one of the four young girls removed by the Confederates at the time of the capture of the officers had reappeared in the vicinity of the burned house. This fact was soon forgotten by Coleman and Bromley, who were working like beavers, pecking the stones for the mill; but to Philip it was an event of absorbing interest. Where were the others? What sufferings and what indignities had the returned wanderer endured in her long absence, and what hardships and dangers had not she braved to reach her native valley again? Gentle as Philip\'s nature was, he possessed in a marked degree the power to love and the hunger to be loved in return. Occasionally a man in a dungeon or on a desert island, or in the shadow of a scaffold, has devoted himself to a one-sided passion in circumstances as baffling as those that hedged in Philip.

The sight of this lonely girl wandering back to the blackened ruin in the deserted clearing furnished the dolorous lady his knightly fancy craved. A speck in the distance, he drew her to his arms in the magic lens, and consoled her with such words of sympathy and endearment as his fancy prompted. In short, he had the old disease that makes a princess out of a poor girl in cow-skin shoes and a homespun frock, and had it all the worse that she kept her distance, as this one did. In the long days when storms interrupted his observations, or fog hung over the valley, he wrote tender letters to his princess on prepared leaves of his prayer-book, in which the grave responses of the Litany ran in faint lines, like a water-mark, under the burning words on the paper.

He watched Jones and the kindly neighbors (not including Shifless) clearing away the wreckage and rebuilding the Smith house between the sturdy stone chimneys. The new cabin was divided by an open covered passage, through which Philip could look with the glass to the sunlit field beyond, and watch the Princess Smith entering either of the doors opposite to each other in the sides of the passage.

This love of Philip\'s had sprung into being full fledged, without any stage of infant growth like an ordinary passion. Beside............