hand, soothing him.

"Where is the regiment? What has happened? Let me call you mother. What
has happened, mother?"

"A great victory, dear. The war is over, and the regiment was the
bravest in the field."

His eyes kindled, his lips trembled, he sobbed, and the tears ran down
his face. He was very weak, too weak to move his hand.

From that time, he recovered. Slowly, for he had been desperately
wounded in the head, and had been shot in the body, but making some
little advance every day. When he had gained sufficient strength to
converse as he lay in bed, he soon began to remark that Mrs. Taunton
always brought him back to his own history. Then he recalled his
preserver's dying words, and thought, "It comforts her."

One day he awoke out of a sleep, refreshed, and asked her to read to
him. But the curtain of the bed, softening the light, which she always
drew back when he awoke, that she might see him from her table at the
bedside where she sat at work, was held undrawn; and a woman's voice
spoke, which was not hers.

"Can you bear to see a stranger?" it said softly. "Will you like to see
a stranger?"

"Stranger!" he repeated. The voice awoke old memories, before the days
of Private Richard Doubledick.

"A stranger now, but not a stranger once," it said in tones that
thrilled him. "Richard, dear Richard, lost through so many years, my
name--"

He cried out her name "Mary," and she held him in her arms, and his
head lay on her bosom.

* * * * *

Well! They were happy. It was a long recovery, but they were happy
through it all. The snow had melted on the ground, and the birds were
singing in the leafless thickets of the early spring, when those three
were first able to ride out together, and when people flocked about the
open carriage to cheer and congratulate _Captain_ Richard Doubledick.

But even then it became necessary for the Captain, instead of returning
to England, to complete his recovery in the climate of Southern France.
They found a spot upon the Rhone, within a ride of the old town of
Avignon, and within view of its broken bridge, which was all they could
desire; they lived there, together, six months; then returned to
England. Mrs. Taunton, growing old after three years--though not so old
as that her bright, dark eyes were dimmed--and remembering that her
strength had been benefited by the change, resolved to go back for a
year to those parts. So she went with