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