iver himself became a
captain.

At last the bullet Oliver had sought found him; but it spared his life
and only incapacitated him for service.

There were no trained nurses during the war, and Lucy Drayton, like so
many girls, when the war grew fiercer, went into the hospitals, and by
devotion supplied their place.

Believing that life was ended for her, she had devoted herself wholly to
the cause, and self-repression had given to her face the gentleness and
consecration of a nun.

It was said that once as she bent over a wounded common soldier, he
returned to consciousness, and after gazing up at her a moment, asked
vaguely, "Who are you, Miss?"

"I am one of the sisters whom our Father has sent to nurse you and help
you to get well. But you must not talk."

The wounded man closed his eyes and then opened them with a faint smile.

"All right; just one word. Will you please ask your pa if I may be his
son-in-law?"

Into the hospital was brought one day a soldier so broken and bandaged
that no one but Lucy Drayton might have recognized Oliver Hampden.

For a long time his life was despaired of; but he survived.

When consciousness returned to him, the first sound he heard was a
voice which had often haunted him in his dreams, but which he had never
expected to hear again.

"Who is that!" he asked, feebly.

"It is I, Oliver--it is Lucy."

The wounded man moved slightly and the girl bending over him caught the
words, whispered brokenly to himself:

"I am dreaming."

But he was not dreaming.

Lucy Drayton's devotion probably brought him back from death and saved
his life.

In the hell of that hospital one man at least found the balm for his
wounds. When he knew how broken he was he offered Lucy her release. Her
reply was in the words of the English girl to the wounded Napier, "If
there is enough of you left to hold your soul, I will marry you."

As soon as he was sufficiently convalescent, they were married.

Lucy insisted that General Hampden should be informed, but the young
man knew his father's bitterness, and refused. He relied on securing
his consent later, and Lucy, fearing for her patient's life, and having
secured her own father's consent, yielded.

It was a mistake.

Oliver Hampden misjudged the depth of his father's feeling, and General
Hampden was mortally offended by his having married without informing
him.

Oliver adored his father and he sent him a present in token of his
desir