"He was a man, he was," Peter says admiringly. "If I got the better of the man who had earned it, it stands to reason that I'm a better man than him and fit to wear it." So Peter wears his Iron Cross, to the wonder and admiration of the farmers baiting their horses at the Inn, the blacksmith's eleven children, and the inhabitants in general of our village. How much he tells those eager listeners of the horrors he has seen I do not know, but sometimes from that bench by the kitchen door, I hear fragments of his tales of suffering that make me sick and faint. Yet he is very reticent in regard to it, having evidently a feeling that he must protect others from knowing what he has known. As I make his acquaintance anew I realize that his great loss is truly exceeding gain; there is more of his real self in his wakened mind and soul than he lost in his arm. But Peter, invalided home, returned not alone. It seemed to me, as he came up the walk, that he was over-heavily weighed down by luggage, though he had a brother soldier to help him. "If you please, 'm," said Peter diffidently, when our first greetings were over, "I've taken the liberty of bringing some one 'ome." "Nothing could please me better," I said, holding out a welcoming hand to the tall soldier at his side. "If you please, 'm," said Peter, grinning,--if heroes can be said to grin,--"she's inside." He opened the big old-fashioned basket he was carrying, made of osier, a kind that I remember seeing in my grandmother's attic many years ago, and there--O Pharaoh's daughter, how I understand you now!--was a little child of perhaps ten months, asleep. She had soft dark hair, hands a bit too thin for a baby, eyes that proved to be, when she wakened and opened them, big and brown; and a mouth that had learned and not forgotten, like so many sorrowful mouths to-day, how to smile. "Where did you find her?" Madge and I cried out in one breath. "She was in the village where I was taken when I was wounded; you will hexcuse me, 'm, but I cannot say its name, I really cannot. A woman had taken charge of her for weeks; she had been found quite deserted by the roadside, I believe, 'm, earlier in the war, when people were trying to escape from the henemy. The nurse used to bring her into the 'ospital just to let the soldiers see her." Peter was disappointed that I could not speak, but speak I could not. "She's a French baby, 'm," he added. "I took a great fancy to her, and when I came away I told them----" "What did you tell them, Peter?" I asked sternly. The little thing had grasped my finger and was trying to pull herself up. It was the first touch from any of my fugitives that seemed to come from my very own, and I knew that the French baby had come into my life to stay.