Scott Lancer sank into a chair near his wounded brother’s bedside the night after Day Pardee’s ill-fated raid on Lancer.  The doctor would arrive soon – he hoped – and tend to Johnny. 

            When he did, about an hour later, he brought with him a red-haired, brown-eyed bundle of efficiency named Maura Talbot.  A woman whose eyes shone with love and compassion for a young man she didn’t know. 

            The sound of Maura’s Irish brogue caused a wave of homesickness to briefly flow over Scott.  Not since he’d left Boston had he heard that accent – one he’d come to associate mostly with poor immigrants or domestics such as maids. Many wealthy families had Irish girls for maids and some had Irish women for housekeepers or washerwomen. 

             Though Scott could sense a certain sadness about Mrs. Talbot he, like his brother, would also find that she was a warm, loving, gentle and compassionate person who loved Murdoch Lancers sons as if they were her own.  Later he would learn the sad history of how she and her husband Jim had raised three sons only to lose them in the war.

             In the next few months Scott and Johnny would find the Talbots to be wonderful neighbors and Maura would become somewhat of a surrogate mother to both the young man who’d never known his and the one who’d lost his when he was still quite young.  It would be a very special relationship.