"You do!"

"Promotion, eh!" she was looking the scrawl over again.

The word, as she pronounced it, was not an interrogation. Miss Ames
seemed to be musing, yet with no activity of curiosity, on the one idea
which had evidently possessed the child's mind in writing.

There was silence for a moment after this ejaculation; then the surgeon
spoke.

"I enlisted as a private," said he, speaking with a difficulty that
might not have been manifest to any ordinary hearer. "My daughter did
not know that I had a profession; but my diploma satisfied the
Department when my promotion was spoken of. When I became a live man in
the service, I wished to serve where I could bring the most to pass, and
it was not in camp, or on the field,--except as a healer." He looked at
his watch as he uttered these last words, and arose as if his hour of
rest had expired; but then, instead of taking one step forward, he
turned and looked at Miss Ames, and she seemed to hear him saying, "Is
this a time for flight?"

He answered that question, for he had asked it of himself, by sitting
down again.

"I _ought_ to take a few minutes to myself," he said, with grave
deliberation, "I shall have no time like this to speak of my child,--for
her, I mean"; and if, while he spoke thus, he lacked perfect composure,
the hour was his, and he knew it. "More than a dozen years ago," he
continued, "I went to Dalton. I was sick and dying, as I thought.
Janet's mother nursed me through a fever, and was the means of saving my
life. I married her. I was grateful for the care she had taken of me;
and while regaining my strength, during that September and October, I
fell into the mistake of thinking that it was she who made the world
seem beautiful to me again, and life worth keeping. But you have seen
enough since you have been in this hospital to understand that this war
has been salvation to a good many men, as it will prove to the nation. I
enlisted as much as anything to get away from--where I was. The Devil
himself couldn't hold me there any longer. He had managed things long
enough. The child is capable of love, you see. Can you help us? I don't
know, but I think you were sent from above to do it, somehow. I see--I
must live for Janet. When I think that she might live in the same world
where you do, that I have no right to surround her with any other
conditions--does God take me for a robber? No! for he managed to get
this letter to me when--" He stopped s