laughed good-naturedly.

'Is not Blanche a beautiful dear darling?' cried Mary, eagerly. 'It is
so nice to have her. They could not come at first because of the
infection, and then because of the rifle corps, and now it is delicious
to have all at home.'

'Well, Molly, I'm glad it wasn't you that have married. Mind, you
mustn't marry till I do.'

And Harry was really glad that Mary's laugh was perfectly 'fancy free,'
as she answered, 'I'm sure I hope not, but I won't promise, because
that might be unreasonable, you know.'

'Oh, you prudent, provident Polly! But,' added Harry, recalled to a
sense of time by a clock striking eleven, 'I came to bring you
something, Mary. You shall have it, if you will give me another.'

Mary recognized, with some difficulty, a Prayer-Book with limp covers
that Margaret had given him after his first voyage. Not only was it
worn by seven years' use, but it was soiled and stained with dark
brownish red, and a straight round hole perforated it from cover to
cover.

'Is it too bad to keep?' said Harry. 'Let me just cut out my name in
Margaret's hand, and the verse of the 107th Psalm; luckily the ball
missed that.'

'The ball?' said Mary, beginning to understand.

'Yes. Every one of those circles that you see cut out there, was in
here,' said Harry, laying his hand over his chest, 'before the ball,
which I have given to my father.'

'O, Harry!' was all Mary could say, pointing to her own name in a
pencil scrawl on the fly-leaf.

'Yes, I set that down because I could not speak to tell what was to be
done with it, when we didn't know that that book had really been the
saving of my life. That hair's-breadth deviation of the bullet made
all the difference.'

Mary was kissing the blood-stained book, and sobbing.

'Why, Mary, what is there to cry for? It is all over now, I tell you.
I am as well as man would wish, and there's no more about it but to
thank God, and try to deserve His goodness.'

'Yes, yes, I know, Harry; but to think how little we knew, or thought,
or felt--going on in our own way when you were in such danger and
suffering!'

'Wasn't I very glad you were going on in your own way!' said Harry.
'Why, Mary, it was that which did it--it has been always that thought
of you at the Minster every day, that kept me to reading the Psalms,
and so having the book about me. And did not it do one good to lie and
think of the snug room, and my father's spectacles, and al