now, in the pale face—smiled upon him; and
the hand he had kissed thirteen years ago,
laid itself fondly on his breast.

"Write to my mother. Yon will see Home
again. Tell her how we became friends. It
will comfort her, as it comforts me."

He spoke no more, but faintly signed for
a moment towards his hair as it fluttered in
the wind. The Ensign understood him. He
smiled again when he saw that, and gently
turning his face over on the supporting arm
as if for rest, died, with his hand upon the
breast in which he had revived a soul.

No dry eye looked on Ensign Richard
Doubledick, that melancholy day. He buried
his friend on the field, and became a lone, bereaved
man. Beyond his duty he appeared
to have but two remaining cares in life; one,
to preserve the little packet of hair he was to
give to Taunton's mother; the other, to
encounter that French officer who had rallied
the men under whose fire Taunton fell. A
new legend now began to circulate among
our troops; and it was, that when he and
the French oificer came face to face once
more, there would be weeping in France.

The war went on—and through it went the
exact picture of the French officer on the one
side, and the bodily reality upon the other—
until the Battle of Toulouse was fought. In
the returns sent home, appeared these words:
"Severely wounded, but not dangerously,
Lieutenant Richard Doubledick."

At Midsummer time in the year eighteen
hundred and fourteen, Lieutenant Richard
Doubledick, now a browned soldier, seven and
thirty years of age, came home to England,
invalided. He brought the hair with him,
near his heart. Many a French officer had
he seen, since that day; many a dreadful
night, in searching with men and lanterns for
his wounded, had he relieved French officers
lying disabled; but, the mental picture and
the reality had never come together.

Though he was weak and suffered pain, he
lost not an hour in getting down to Frome in
Somersetshire, where Taunton's mother lived.
In the sweet, compassionate words that
naturally present themselves to the mind tonight,
"he was the only son of his mother,
and she was a widow."

It was a Sunday evening, and the lady
sat at her quiet garden-window, reading the
Bible; reading to herself, in a trembling
voice, that very passage in it as I have heard
him tell. He heard the words; " Young
man, I say unto thee, arise!"

He had to pass the window; and the bright
dark eyes of his debased time seemed to look
at him. Her heart told her who he was; she
came to the door, quickly, and fell upon his
neck.

"He saved me from ruin, made me a human
creature, won me from infamy and shame.
O God, for ever bless him! As He will, He
will!"

"He will! " the lady answered. " I know
he is in Heaven! " Then she piteously
cried, " But, O, my darling boy, my darling
boy!"

Never, from the hour when Private
Richard Doubledick enlisted at Chatham,
had the Private, Corporal, Sergeant, Sergeant-
Major, Ensign, or Lieutenant, breathed his
right name, or the name of Mary Marshall,
or a word of the story of his life, into any
ear, except his reclaimer's. That previous
scene in his existence was closed. He had
firmly resolved that his expiation should be,
to live unknown; to disturb no more the
peace that had long grown over his old
offences; to let it be revealed when he was
dead, that he had striven and suffered, and had
never forgotten; and then, if they could forgive
him and believe him—well, it would be
time enough—time enough!

But, that night, remembering the words he
had cherished for two years, " Tell her how
we became friends. It will comfort her, as it
comforts me," he related everything. It
gradually seemed to him, as if in his maturity
he had recovered a mother; it gradually
seemed to her, as if in her bereavement she
had found a son. During his stay in England,
the quiet garden into which he had slowly
and painfully crept, a stranger, became the
boundary of his home; when he was able to
rejoin his regiment in the spring, he left the
garden, thinking was this indeed the first
time he had ever turned his face towards the
old colours, with a woman's blessing!

He followed them—so ragged, so scarred
and pierced now, that they would scarcely
hold together—to Quatre Bras, and Ligny.
He stood beside them, in an awful stillness
of many men, shadowy through the mist and
drizzle of a wet June forenoon, on the field of
Waterloo. And down to that hour, the
picture in his mind of the French officer had
never been compared with the reality.

The famous regiment was in action early
in the battle, and received its first check in
many an eventful year, when he was seen to
fall. But, it swept on to avenge him, and left
behind it no such creature in the world of
consciousness, as Lieutenant Richard Doubledick.

Through pits of mire, and pools of rain;
along deep ditches, once roads, that were
pounded and ploughed to pieces by artillery,
heavy waggons, tramp of men and horses,
and the struggle of every wheeled thing that
could carry wounded soldiers; jolted among
the dying and the dead, so disfigured by blood
and mud as to be hardly recognisable for
humanity; undisturbed by the moaning of
men and the shrieking of horses, which,
newly taken from the peaceful pursuits of
life, could not endure the sight of the stragglers
lying by the wayside, never to resume
their toilsome journey; dead, as to any sentient
life that was in it, and yet alive; the
form that had been Lieutenant Richard
Doubledick, with whose praises England