o the man's outstretched arms.

Ay, it was Dobri Petroff himself--or rather his attenuated shadow,--with
apparently nothing but skin and sinew left to hold his bones together,
and not a symptom of blood in his whole body. The little blood left,
however, rushed to his face, and he found sufficient energy to exclaim
"Thank the Lord!" ere his senses left him.

It is said that joy never kills. Certainly it failed to do so on this
occasion. Dobri soon recovered consciousness, and then, little by
little, with many a pause for breath, and in tones that were woefully
unlike to those of the bold, lion-like scout of former days, he told how
he had fainted and fallen on the breast of his master, how he had lain
all night on the battle-field among the dead and dying, how he had been
stripped and left for dead by the ruffian followers of the camp, and how
at last he had been found and rescued by one of the ambulance-wagons of
the Red Cross.

When Marika told him of the death of their two children he was not so
much overwhelmed as she had anticipated.

"I'm not so sure that you are right, Marika," he said, after a long sad
pause. "That our darling boy is now in heaven I doubt not, for you saw
him killed. But you did not see Ivanka killed, and what you call her
death-shriek may not have been her last. We must not be too ready to
believe the worst. If I had not believed you and them to have been all
murdered together, I would not have sought death so recklessly. I will
not give up hope in that God who has brought _you_ back, and saved _me_
from death. I _think_ that darling Ivanka is still alive."

Marika was only too glad to grasp at and hold on to the hope thus held
out--feeble though the ground was on which it rested, and it need
scarcely be said that she went about her hospital duties after that with
a lightness and joy of heart which she had not felt for many a day.

Dobri Petroff's recovery was now no longer doubtful. Day by day his
strength returned, until at last he was dismissed cured.

But it must not be supposed that Dobri was "himself again." He stood as
erect, indeed, and became as sturdy in appearance as he used to be, but
there was many a deep-seated injury in his powerful frame which damaged
its lithe and graceful motions, and robbed it of its youthful spring.

Returning to the village of Venilik at the conclusion of the armistice,
the childless couple proceeded to rebuild their ruined home.

The new