Never on earth would it be said to him, "Receive thy sight." The lady knew this who sat down by his bedside to wait for his awaking. The surgeon had told her this, when at last, after having searched for her brother long among the dead, she came to Frere's Hospital and found him alive. She sat so close beside him it seemed that he could not remain a moment unconscious of her immediate presence after waking. Her hand lay just where his hand, moving when he wakened, must touch it. She had rightly calculated the chances; he did touch it, and started and said: "Who's here? Doctor!" Then with a firmer grasp he seized the unresisting fingers, and exclaimed, "My God, am I dreaming? it ought to be Lizzie's hand." "The doctor told me I should find you here, and might come," she answered; and, disguised as the voice was by the feeling that tore her heart, the Colonel, poor young fellow, listening as if for life, knew it, and said, "O Lizzie, my child, I don't know about this,--why couldn't you wait?" "I waited and waited forever," she answered. "You're not sorry that I've found you out after such a hunt? Of course you'll make believe, but then--you needn't; I'm here, any way!" Just then the surgeon came in. The Colonel knew his step, and said, "Doctor, look here; is this Lizzie?" "I believe you're right," said the doctor. "She said she had a hero for a brother, and I have no doubt about that myself." "O Dan, we had given you up! Though I knew all the time we shouldn't. I could not believe--" "Must come to that Lizzie,--do it over again; for what you have here isn't your old Dan." "My old Dan!" she exclaimed, and then there was a little break in the conversation the two heroes were endeavoring to maintain. Meanwhile the surgeon had seated himself on the edge of the bed waiting the moment when there should be a positive need of him. He saw when it arrived. "Colonel," said he, in his hearty, cheery voice, which alone had lifted many a poor fellow from the slough of misery, and put new heart and soul in him, since his ministrations began in the hospital,--"Colonel, your aids are in waiting." The soldier smiled; his face flushed. "My aids can wait," said he. "That is a fine thing to say. Here he has been bothering me, madam, not to say browbeating me, and I've been moving heaven and earth for my part, and at last have secured the aids, and now hear him dismiss them!" "Bring them round here," said the patient suddenly. The surgeon quietly lifted from the floor a pair of crutches, and placed them in his patient's hands. "How many years must I rely on my aids?" he asked quietly. "Perhaps three months. By that time you will be as good as ever." A change passed over the young man's face at this. Whatever the emotion so expressed, it had otherwise no demonstration. He turned now abruptly toward his sister, and said: "They can wait. I've got another kind of aid now. Come, Lizzie, say something."