"I think it is. I think, too, that you are arguing against your own convictions. Well, I've had my say. I deliberately came out to-day without Murdoch so that I might have it. You would be quite justified in firing me for what I've done. But now I'm through, and no matter what may happen, remember, Linder will never have suspected anything."

"That's like you, old chap. We'll drop it at that, but I must explain that Zen is going to town to-night to meet Transley, and is leaving the boy with me. It is an event in my young life, and I have house-cleaned for it appropriately. Come inside and admire my handiwork."

Linder admired as he was directed, and then the two men fell into a discussion of business matters. Eventually Grant cooked supper, and just as they had finished Mrs. Transley drove up in her motor.

"Here we are!" she cried, cheerily. "Glad to see you, Mr. Linder. Wilson has his teddy-bear and his knife and his pyjamas, and is a little put out, I think, that I wouldn't let him bring the pig."

"I shall try and make up the deficiency," said Grant, smiling broadly, as the boy climbed to his shoulder. "Won't you come in? Linder, among his other accomplishments learned in France, is an excellent chaperon."

"Thank you, no; I must get along. I shall call early in the morning, so that you will not be delayed on Wilson's account."

"No need of that; he can ride to the field with me on Prince. He is a great help with the plowing."

"I'm sure." She stepped up to Grant and drew the boy's face down to hers. "Good-bye, dear; be a good boy," she whispered, and Wilson waved kisses to her as the motor sped down the road.

Linder took his departure soon after, and Grant was surprised to find himself almost embarra.s.sed in the presence of his little guest.

The embarra.s.sment, however, was all on his side. Wilson was greatly interested in the strange things in the house, and investigated them with the romantic thoroughness of his years. Grant placed a collection of war trophies that had no more fight in them at the child's disposal, and he played about until it was time to go to bed.

Where to start on the bedtime preparations was a puzzle, but Wilson himself came to Grant's aid with explicit instructions about b.u.t.tons and pins. Grant fervently hoped the boy would be able to reverse the process in the morning, otherwise--

Suddenly, with a little dexterous movement, the child divested himself of all his clothing, and rushed into a far corner.

"You have to catch me now," he shouted in high glee. "One, two--"

Evidently it was a game, and Grant entered into the spirit of it, finally running Wilson to earth on the farthest corner of the kitchen table. To adjust the pyjamas was, as Grant confessed, a bigger job than harnessing a four-horse team, but at length it was completed.

"You must hear my prayer, Uncle Man-on-the-Hill," said the boy. "You have to sit down in a chair."

Grant sat down and with a strange mixture of emotions drew the little chap between his knees as he listened to the long-forgotten prattle.

He felt his fingers running through Wilson's hair as other fingers, now long, long turned to dust, had once run through his....

At the third line the boy stopped. "You have to tell me now," he prompted.

"But I can't, Willie; I have forgotten."

"Huh, you don't know much," the child commented, and glibly quoted the remaining lines. "And G.o.d bless Daddy and Mamma and teddy-bear and Uncle Man-on-the-Hill and the pig. Amen," he concluded, accompanying the last word with a jump which landed him fairly in Grant's lap. His little arms went up about his friend's neck, and his little soft cheek rested against a tanned and weather-beaten one. Slowly Grant's arms closed about the warm, lithe body and pressed it to his in a new pa.s.sion, strange and holy. Then he led him to the whim-room, turned down the white sheets in which no form had ever lain and placed the boy between them, snuggled his teddy down by his side and set his knife properly in view upon the dresser. And then he leaned down again and kissed the little face, and whispered, "Good night, little boy; G.o.d keep you safe to-night, and always." And suddenly Grant realized that he had been praying....

He withdrew softly, and only partly closed the door; then he chose a seat where he could see the little figure lying peacefully on the white bed. The last shafts of the setting sun were falling in amber wedges across the room. He picked up a book, thinking to read, but he could not keep his attention on the page; he found his mind wandering back into the long-forgotten chambers of its beginning, conjuring up from the faint recollections of infancy visions of the mother he had hardly known.... After a while he tip-toed to the whim-room door and found that Wilson, with his arms firmly clasped about his teddy-bear, was deep in the sleep of childhood.

"The dear little chap," he murmured. "I must watch by him to-night. It would be unspeakable if anything should happen him while he is under my care."

He felt a sense of warmth, almost a smothering sensation, and raised his hand to his forehead. It came down covered with perspiration.

"It's amazingly close," he said, and walked to one of the French windows opening to the west. The sun had gone down, and a brooding darkness lay over all the valley, but far up in the sky he could trace the outline of a cloud. Above, the stars shone with an unwonted brightness, but below all was a bank of blue-black darkness. The air was intensely still; in the silence he could hear the wash of the river. Grant reflected that never before had he heard the wash of the river at that distance.

"Looks like a storm," he commented, casually, and suddenly felt something tighten about his heart. The storms of the foothill country, which occasionally sweep out of the mountains and down the valleys on the shortest notice, had no terror for him; he had sat on horseback under an oilskin slicker through the worst of them; but to-night!

Even as he watched, the distant glare of lightning threw the heaving proportions of the thundercloud into sharp relief.

He turned to his chair, but found himself pacing the living-room with an altogether inexplicable nervousness. He had held the line many a bad night at the Front while Death spat out of the darkness on every hand; he had smoked in the faces of his men to cover his own fear and to shame them out of theirs; he had run the whole gamut of the emotion of the trenches, but tonight something more awesome than any engine of man was gathering its forces in the deep valleys. He shook himself to throw off the morbidness that was settling upon him; he laughed, and the echo came back haunting from the silent corners of the house. Then he lit a lamp and set it, burning low, in the whim-room, and noted that the boy slept on, all unconcerned.

"d.a.m.n Linder, anyway!" he exclaimed presently. "I believe he shook me up more than I realized. He charged me with insincerity; me, who have always made sincerity my special virtue.... Well, there may be something in it."

A faint, indistinct growling, as of the grinding of mighty rocks, came down from the distances.

"The storm will be nothing," he a.s.sured himself. "A gust of wind; a spatter of rain; perhaps a dash of hail; then, of a sudden, a sky so calm and peaceful one would wonder how it ever could have been disturbed." Even as he spoke the house shivered in every timber as the gale struck it and went whining by.

He rushed to the whim-room, but found the boy still sleeping soundly. "I must stay up," he reasoned with himself; "I must be on hand in case he should be frightened."

Suddenly it occurred to Grant that, quite apart from his love for Wilson, if anything should happen the child in his house a very difficult situation would be created. Transley would demand explanations--explanations which would be hard to make. Why was Wilson there at all? Why was he not at home with Sarah? Sarah away from home!

Why had Zen kept that a secret?... How long had this thing been going on, anyway? Grant feared neither Transley nor any other man, and yet there was something akin to fear in his heart as he thought of these possibilities. He would be held accountable--doubly accountable--if anything happened the child. Even though it were something quite beyond his control; lightning, for example--

The gale subsided as quickly as it had come, and the sudden silence which followed was even more awesome. It lasted only for a moment; a flash of lightning lit up every corner of the house, bursting like white fire from every wall and ceiling. Grant rushed to the whim-room and was standing over the child when the crash of thunder came upon them. The boy stirred gently, smiled, and settled back to his sleep.

Grant drew the blinds in the whim-room, and went out to draw them in the living-room, but the sight across the valley was of a majesty so terrific that it held him fascinated. The play of the lightning was incessant, and with every flash the little lakes shot back their white reflection, and distant farm window-panes seemed heliographing to each other through the night. As yet there was no rain, but a dense wall of cloud pressed down from the west, and the farther hills were hidden even in the brightest flashes.

Turning from the windows, Grant left the blinds open. "Only cowardice would close them," he muttered to himself, "and surely, in addition to the other qualities Linder has attributed to me, I am not a coward. If it were not for Willie I could stand and enjoy it."

Presently rain began to fall; a few scattered drops at first, then thicker, harder, until the roof and windows rattled and shook with their force. The wind, which had gone down so suddenly, sprang up again, buffeting the house as it rushed by with the storm. Grant stood in the whim-room, in the dim light of the lamp turned low, and watched the steady breathing of his little guest with as much anxiety as if some dread disease threatened him. For the first time in his life there came into Grant's consciousness some sense of the price which parents pay in the rearing of little children. He thought of all the hours of sickness, of all the childish hurts and dangers, and suddenly he found himself thinking of his father with a tenderness which was strange and new to him. Doubtless under even that stern veneer of business interest had beat a heart which, many a time, had tightened in the grip of fear for young Dennison.

As the night wore on the storm, instead of spending itself quickly as Grant had expected, continued unabated, but his nervous tension gradually relaxed, and when at length Wilson was awakened by an exceptionally loud clap of thunder he took the boy in his arms and soothed his little fears as a mother might have done. They sat for a long while in a big chair in the living-room, and exchanged such confidences as a man may with a child of five. After the lad had dropped back into sleep Grant still sat with him in his arms, thinking....

And what he thought was this: He was a long while framing the exact thought; he tried to beat it back in a dozen ways, but it circled around him, gradually closed in upon him and forced its acceptance. "Linder called me a fool, and he was right. He might have called me a coward, and again he would have been right. Linder was right."

Some way it seemed easy to reach that conclusion while this little sleeping form lay in his arms. Perhaps it had quickened into life that enn.o.bling spirit of parenthood which is all sacrifice and love and self-renunciation. The ends which seemed so all-desirable a few hours ago now seemed sordid and mean and unimportant. Reaching out for some means of self-justification Grant turned to the Big Idea; that was his; that was big and generous and n.o.ble. But after all, was it his? The idea had come in upon him from some outside source--as perhaps all ideas do; struck him like a bullet; swept him along. He was merely the agency employed in putting it into effect. It had cost him nothing. He was doing that for society. Now was the time to do something that would cost; to lay his hand upon the prize and then relinquish it--for the sake of Wilson Transley!

"And by G.o.d I'll do it!" he exclaimed, springing to his feet. He carried the child back to his bed, and then turned again to watch the storm through the windows. It seemed to be subsiding; the lightning, although still almost continuous, was not so near. The air was cooling off and the rain was falling more steadily, without the gusts and splatters which marked the storm in its early stages. And as he looked out over the black valley, lighted again and again by the glare of heaven's artillery, Grant became conscious of a deep, mysterious sense of peace.

It was as though his soul, like the elements about him, caught in a paroxysm of elemental pa.s.sion, had been swept clean and pure in the fire of its own upheaval.

"What little incidents turn our lives!" he thought. "That boy; in some strange way he has been the means of bringing me to see things as they are--which not even Linder could do. The mind has to be fertilized for the thought, or it can't think it. He brought the necessary influence to bear. It was like the night at Murdoch's house, the night when the Big Idea was born. Surely I owe that to Murdoch, and his wife, and Phyllis Bruce."

The name of Phyllis Bruce came to him with almost a shock. He had been so occupied with his farm and with Zen that he had thought but little of her of late. As he turned the matter over in his mind now he felt that he had used Phyllis rather shabbily. He recalled having told Murdoch to send for her, but that was purely a business transaction. Yet he felt that he had never entirely forgotten her, and he was surprised to find how tenderly the memory of her welled up within him. Zen's vision had been clearer than his; she had recognized in Phyllis Bruce a party to his life's drama. "The second choice may be really the first," she had said.

Grant lit a cigar and sat down to smoke and think. The matter of Phyllis needed prompt settlement. It afforded a means to burn his bridges behind him, and Grant felt that it would be just as well to cut off all possibility of retreat. Fortunately the situation was one that could be explained--to Phyllis. He had come out West again to be sure of himself; he was sure now; would she be his wife? He had never thought that line out to a conclusion before, but now it proved a subject very delightful to contemplate.

He had told himself, back in those days in the East, that it would not be fair to marry Phyllis Bruce while his heart was another's. He had believed that then; now he knew the real reason was that he had allowed himself to hope, against all reason, that Zen Transley might yet be his.

He had harbored an unworthy desire, and called it a virtue. Well--the die was cast. He had definitely given Zen up. He would tell Phyllis everything.... That is, everything she needed to know.

It would be best to settle it at once--the sooner the better. He went to his desk and took out a telegraph blank. He addressed it to Phyllis, pondered a minute in a great hush in the storm, and wrote,

"I am sure now. May I come? Dennison."

This done he turned to the telephone, hurrying as one who fears for the duration of his good resolutions. It was a chance if the line was not out of business, but he lifted the receiver and listened to the thump of his heart as he waited.

Presently came a voice as calm and still as though it spoke from another world, "Number?"

He gave the number of Linder's rooms in town; it was likely Linder had remained in town, but it was a question whether the telephone bell would waken him. He had recollections of Linder as a sound sleeper. But even as this possibility entered his mind he heard Linder's phlegmatic voice in his ear.

"Oh, Linder! I'm so glad I got you. Rush this message to Phyllis Bruce.... Linder?... Linder!"