“Nay, son, Deborah will be a happier woman, if her looks are not so unusual. And in a fortnight thee and I will go to thy people in England, the Spirit tells me that there thee will find peace and rest.” “But I will come back to my own land, my own dear country!” Debby’s clear voice had not been toned down as much as her appearance; “I will come back to America. What was all the good of—of my suffering—and fighting—if I go away just as the glory is beginning?” “Three cheers!” cried the doctor. “Deborah, my son,” the mother broke in. “Well, Deborah, then, you shall see your people and choose for yourself, and—and—God bless you!” [Illustration: _Molly._ “Rounded into perfect maidenly beauty.”] Debby saw her people—sturdy wealthy folk they were, who offered her a home and place where her mother as a girl lived and loved. And she, in return, very tenderly told to the widowed mother of the boy who had died afar, the story of bravery and tragedy. “He was your own cousin, child, and you took his life!” The words rang shrilly through the quiet room as the tale ended. “He tried to take mine. He wounded me sorely twice.” Even in her grief poor Debby tried to defend herself as she had always done in her honest fashion; “and he—took—my father from—me!” The black robed figure straightened at the words and the empty arms outstretched to the shrinking girl: “Oh! my child! my poor child! do not look at me like that! So looked your mother when we turned her from her home. Ah! lass, had I but clung to her I might have been spared all this!” The arms were no longer empty. Hungry, starving Debby rushed to fill her mother’s place! “There! there! little maid, do not weep so sadly. We will go to this new land together, just you and I, and begin once again.” Their tears were falling more gently now. “Try to love me, dear brave child, for I am very lonely!” Try to love her! Why it seemed to Debby as if she had lived but for this blessed chance. So they traveled to the land of Debby’s birth, and in a quaint old house on the outskirts of Philadelphia, they began life just as the troublous war ended and the young republic reared its proud head. And into that happy home as soon as they could summon him, came that rascal Jack Martin, and he found there a welcome so loving and true that he disappointed all those who expected only evil of him and became gentleman Jack, and a good foster son to the kindly woman who reigned so nobly o’er his life. And by and by, when Deborah’s face and form had rounded into perfect maidenly beauty, and the rich brown hair had grown to comely length and waviness, came Doctor Bell to tell his love and doubts. “I need your help Deborah,” he said humbly, “I love a woman true and sweet, but I fear her. A warrior maid is she, dauntless on the field of battle, and braver than any other whom I know. Can I hope that in the narrow limit of a home her free spirit would find space enough?”