"It was only dark to me? Something passed away, like a black shadow. But
as it went, and the sun--O the blessed sun, how beautiful it is!--touched
my face, I thought I saw a light white cloud pass out at the door. Was
there nothing that went out?"

She shook her head, and in a little while he fell asleep, she still
holding his hand, and soothing him.

From that time, he recovered. Slowly, for he had been desperately
wounded in the head, and had been shot in the body, but making some
little advance every day. When he had gained sufficient strength to
converse as he lay in bed, he soon began to remark that Mrs. Taunton
always brought him back to his own history. Then he recalled his
preserver's dying words, and thought, "It comforts her."

One day he awoke out of a sleep, refreshed, and asked her to read to him.
But the curtain of the bed, softening the light, which she always drew
back when he awoke, that she might see him from her table at the bedside
where she sat at work, was held undrawn; and a woman's voice spoke, which
was not hers.

"Can you bear to see a stranger?" it said softly. "Will you like to see
a stranger?"

"Stranger!" he repeated. The voice awoke old memories, before the days
of Private Richard Doubledick.

"A stranger now, but not a stranger once," it said in tones that thrilled
him. "Richard, dear Richard, lost through so many years, my name--"