There were no trained nurses during the war, and Lucy Drayton, like so many girls, when the war grew fiercer, went into the hospitals, and by devotion supplied their place.
Believing that life was ended for her, she had devoted herself wholly to the cause, and self-repression had given to her face the gentleness and consecration of a nun.
It was said that once as she bent over a wounded common soldier, he returned to consciousness, and after gazing up at her a moment, asked vaguely, “Who are you, Miss?”
“I am one of the sisters whom our Father has sent to nurse you and help you to get well. But you must not talk.”
The wounded man closed his eyes and then opened them with a faint smile.
“All right; just one word. Will you please ask your pa if I may be his son-in-law?”
Into the hospital was brought one day a soldier so broken and bandaged that no one but Lucy Drayton might have recognized Oliver Hampden.
For a long time his life was despaired of; but he survived.
When consciousness returned to him, the first sound he heard was a voice which had often haunted him in his dreams, but which he had never expected to hear again.
“Who is that!” he asked, feebly.