fficer of five-and-thirty, whom Doubledick saw hurriedly,
almost momentarily, but saw well. He particularly noticed this officer
waving his sword, and rallying his men with an eager and excited cry,
when they fired in obedience to his gesture, and Major Taunton dropped.

It was over in ten minutes more, and Doubledick returned to the spot
where he had laid the best friend man ever had, on a coat spread upon
the wet clay. Major Taunton's uniform was opened at the breast, and on
his shirt were three little spots of blood.

"Dear Doubledick," said he, "I am dying."

"For the love of Heaven, no!" exclaimed the other, kneeling down beside
him, and passing his arm round his neck to raise his head. "Taunton! My
preserver, my guardian angel, my witness! Dearest, truest, kindest of
human beings! Taunton! For God's sake!"

The bright, dark eyes--so very, very dark, 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. You 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 toward 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 officer 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 wi