“Just Debby Mason!” For a moment not a sound broke the silence but the sobs from the figure now kneeling at the feet of the doctor.
Then very calmly the man’s voice went on: “Debby Mason, Washington has sent for you to thank you for what you did at Trenton, He will probably promote you for bravery; of course, you cannot remain in the army, it now is left for you or me to explain why an honorable discharge should be given you. Which one of us shall do it?”
Poor Debby could face death, had done so many times; she could bear cold and suffering but the idea of facing her hero and explain to him her awful deceit, was more than she could dare. But Debby was no coward even in this extremity,—availing herself of one of the privileges of her almost forgotten sex, she found a new way out:
“Write it for me,” she begged, half smiling through her tears, “write it all, then I will take it and bear my punishment like—a man!”
“And afterward?” Doctor Bell questioned, “have you a home? any where to go?”
“No.” The one word echoed through the early twilight like a moan.
“I had only one on earth to love—I followed him to the war—my father lies in an unknown grave near Boston—he died on my arm—but he never knew!”
Something blurred the surgeon’s eyes.
“And then,” in Debby’s low voice there was little left of Shirtliffe’s bravado, “there was one other, a young man in the British army—he looked so like me that my own father could not tell one from the other. That boy was looking for—Debby Mason—he died—by—my—bullet”—a dry sob choked the words—“but I have his mother’s address. I think—from bits of an old story—and from his strange likeness—that that mother will have something to tell—me. But”—and a shudder passed over Debby, “how can I break the news to her, that even in self defence—I took her boy’s life?”
The broken talk had interested Doctor Bell so much that now, when the tale was ended he drew a long sigh of relief. His thoughts were becoming burdensome. Strange relationships between British and American families were not as uncommon to his experience as to simple Debby’s. He saw in the girl before him a heroine of no every day romance, and he meant to see the end of it. She had become an object of absorbing concern to him during the last few weeks, and he did not intend to let her slip out of his life without an effort to restrain her.