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 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
to-night, "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 h