"No, I mean the young woman who come from Charlestown with Jenny. Her name was--" He paused long, endeavoring to recall that name. It trembled on the doctor's lips, but he did not utter it. At last said Farmer Elkins, "There! it was Miss Amey,--Amey? Yes. She took the little girl back hum with her. It was right in there, in the room where you had that spell of fever of yourn. She got you well through that! Ef anything could 'a' brought her through that turn, your letter would. It came across my mind once that, as she'd saved _your_ life, may be you was going to save hern by that are letter! And she was so determined to get to your hospital!" "Thank God she got the letter, any way!" exclaimed the doctor. At that the old man walked into the house to set its best cheer before Nancy's husband, who looked so much like a mourner as he stood there under the trees, with the bitter recollections of the past overwhelming every other thought and feeling of the present. Because it seemed to him that he could not sleep under old Elkins's roof that night, he remained there and slept there,--in the room where his fever ran its course,--in the room where Nancy died. Because this story of the last months of her life was as gall and wormwood to him, he refused it not, but went over it with his wife's relations, and helped them spread a decent pall, according to the custom of mourners; over what had been. Was he endeavoring to deceive himself and others into the belief that he was a mourning man? He was but accepting the varied humiliations of death; for they do not all pertain to the surrendering life. He was not thinking at all of his loss through her, nor of his gain by her. He was thinking, as he stood above the grave of fifteen years, how high Disgrace and Misery had heaped the mound. So bitterly he was thinking of the past, it was without desire that he at last arose and faced the future. * * * * * When he went to Charlestown--for a man on furlough had no time to lose--and saw his Janet in the Colonel's house,--Miss Ames took Janet home with her after that death and funeral,--when he saw how fair and beautiful a promise of girlhood was budding on the poor neglected branch, he said to his assistant, "Will you keep this child with you until the war is over? I am afraid to touch her, or interfere with her destiny. It has been so easy for me to mar, so hard to mend." * * * * * Miss Ames kept the child; the war ended. The surgeon then, like other men, returned home; his regiments were disbanded, and now, one duty, to mankind and the ages, well discharged, another, less conspicuous, but as urgent, claimed him. There was Janet, and Janet's mother,--she who had risen, not from the grave indeed, but from the midst of dangers, sacredly to guard and guide the child. On his way to them he asked himself this question, "How many times must a man be born before he is fit to live?"