"Call me 'Mercy Merrick,'" she added, after a moment's consideration.
Had she given an assumed name?
Was there some unhappy celebrity attached to her own name?
Miss Roseberry did not wait to ask herself these questions.

"How can I thank you," she exclaimed, gratefully, "for your sisterly kindness to a stranger like me ?" "I have only done my duty," said Mercy Merrick, a little coldly.

"Don't speak of it." "I must speak of it.

What a situation you found me in when the French soldiers had driven the Germans away! My traveling-carriage stopped; the horses seized; I myself in a strange country at nightfall, robbed of my money and my luggage, and drenched to the skin by the pouring rain! I am indebted to you for shelter in this place--I am wearing your clothes--I should have died of the fright and the exposure but for you.

What return can I make for such services as these ?" Mercy placed a chair for her guest near the captain's table, and seated herself, at some little distance, on an old chest in a corner of the room.