e had come
out of another nightmare of unconsciousness and fear, "It's Leerie--why,
it's Leerie!"

And Sheila smiled down at him again with the old luminous smile.

When he was sufficiently mended to look about him and take reckoning of
what had happened, he asked first for the ring that he had bought for that
long-before wedding and that he had carried ever since with him. And he
asked, second, for the chaplain.

Sheila drew the gold chain from about her neck and dangled the ring in
front of his nose. "I took it when we cut off your coat that night, and
I've kept it handy ever since. The chaplain's handy, too. He's
promised--any hour of the day or night. Shall we send for him--now?"

Peter nodded.

The nurse turned to go, hesitated, and then came back to the cot. Peter
thought he had never seen her eyes so full of wonder.

"Man o' mine, maybe you won't want me when you know I almost let you go,
that I intended to let you die to save first a French lad that came in
with you."

Peter grinned. "Same old Leerie! Well, we're quits, sweetheart, and I'm
glad to have it off my conscience. Sort of did the same thing myself.
Rushed off in the shelling to bring in that same poor chap--he'd got a
bullet in his leg--and all the time I knew I ought to be thinking of you
first and hanging on to safety. Funny, isn't it, how something queer gets
you in the midst of it all and you do the last thing in the world you want
to do? A year or two and the whole thing will be unexplainable."

Sheila bent over and laid her lips to Peter's. She knew that in a year--in
a century--they would still understand why they had done these things, and
she was glad they had both paid their utmost for the love and happiness
that she knew was theirs now for all time.

Peter broke on her reverie with a chuckle. "Remember old Hennessy saying
once that he believed you would give me away with everything else--if you
thought anybody else needed me more? He'd certainly wash his hands of the
pair of us."

"Hennessy's an old dear. I'll get the chaplain, and afterward let's send
Hennessy the first--and the best--cable he's ever had. Sort of owe it to
him, don't we?"

Without any of the original splendor of decorations, collation, and
attire, with no one but the chaplain to marry them and the chief to bless
them, Sheila O'Leary came into her own at last. As for Peter--he looked as
Hennessy described him on the day the Brookses came home--"wi' one eye on
t