"No!" interrupted Ralph quickly, "not that, doctor--that is, anyway not yet."

"He needs skillful attention."

"He's needing some hash just now!" put in Will Cheever, approaching, his face, despite himself, on a grin. "Hear him!"

The stranger was certainly sticking to his point. "Hash with lots of onions in it!" they heard him call out.

"Will it hurt him to eat, doctor?" inquired Ralph.

"Not a bit of it. In fact, except to feed him and watch, I don't see that he needs anything. You can't splint a brain shock as you can a broken finger, or poultice a skull depression as you would a bruise.

There's simply something mental gone out of the boy's life that science cannot put in again. There is this hope, though: that when the physical shock has fully pa.s.sed, something may develop for the better."

"You mean to-day, to-morrow----"

"Oh, no--weeks, maybe months."

Ralph looked disheartened, but the next moment his face took upon it a look of resolution always adopted when he fully made up his mind to anything.

"Very well," he said, "he must be taken to our house."

With the doctor Ralph was a rare favorite, and his face showed that he read and appreciated the kindly spirit that prompted the young railroader's action. He placed his hand in a friendly way on his shoulder.

"Fairbanks," he said, "you're a good kind, and do credit to yourself, but I fear you are in no shape to take such a burden on your young shoulders."

"It is my burden," said Ralph firmly, "whose else's? Why, doctor! if I let that poor fellow go to the hospital, among utter strangers, handed down the line you don't know where--poorhouse, asylum, and pauper's grave maybe, it would haunt me! No, I feel I am responsible for his condition, and I intend to take care of him, at least until something better for him turns up. Help me, boys."

"I'll drop in to see him again, at your house," said the doctor. "I don't think he will make you any trouble in the way of violence, or that, but you had better keep a constant eye on him."

Ralph thought a good deal on the way to the cottage. He felt that he was doing the right thing, and knew that his mother would not demur to the arrangements he had formulated.

Mrs. Fairbanks not only did not demur, but when she was made aware of the particulars, sustained Ralph in his resolution.

"Poor fellow!" she said sympathetically. "The first thing he needs is a warm bath, and we might find some dry clothes for him, Ralph."

The widow bustled about to do her share in making the unexpected guest comfortable. Will Cheever and his companion felt in duty bound to lend a helping hand to Ralph.

They had put the cot in the middle of the kitchen, and quiet now, but with wide-open eyes, its occupant watched them as they hurriedly got out a tub and put some water to heat on the cook stove.

"Swim," said the stranger, only once, and was content thereafter to watch operations silently.

"He's got dandy muscles--built like a giant!" commented Will, as half an hour later they carried the boy into the neat, cool sitting room, and lodged him among cushions in an easy-chair.

Meantime, Mrs. Fairbanks had not been idle. She had prepared an appetizing lunch. The stranger looked supremely happy as Ralph appeared with a tray of viands. He ate with the zest of a growing, healthy boy, and when he had ended sank back among the cushions and fell into a calm, profound sleep.

"Ralph Fairbanks, you're a brick!" said Will. "He don't look much like the half-drowned, half-starved rat he was when you picked him up."

"Knocked him down, you mean!" said Ralph, with a sigh. "Well, mother, we'll do what we can for him."

"We will do for him just what I pray some one might do for my boy, should such misfortune ever become his lot," said the widow tremulously.

"He looks like a hard-working, honest boy, I only hope he may come out of his daze in time. If not, we will do our duty--what we might think a burden may be a blessing in disguise."

"You're always 'casting bread on the waters,' Mrs. Fairbanks!" declared Will, in his crisp, offhand way.

To return after many days--light-headed, light-hearted Will Cheever!

There are incidents in every boy's life which are the connecting links with all the unknown future, and for Ralph Fairbanks, although he little dreamed it, this was one of them.

CHAPTER X--THE MYSTERIOUS LETTER

Will and his friend offered to attend to the broken window in the old factory for Ralph, and the latter was glad to accept the tendered service.

He gave them the price of gla.s.s and putty, and a blunt case knife, told them they would find his rule under the window, and as they departed felt a.s.sured they would attend to the matter with promptness and dispatch.

Ralph had something on his mind that he felt he could best carry out alone, and after their departure he left his mother quietly sewing in her rocking chair to watch their placidly slumbering guest.

"The boy is a stranger here, of course," Ralph ruminated. "Where did he come from? I hope I will find something among his belongings that will tell."

They were poor belongings, and now hung across a clothes line in the back yard, drying in the warm sunshine.

The coat and trousers were of coa.r.s.e material, clumsily patched here and there as if by a novice, and Ralph decided did not bear that certain unmistakable trace that tells of home or motherly care.

In the trousers pocket Ralph found a coil of string, a blunt bladed pocket knife, and a hunk of linen thread with a couple of needles stuck in it--this was all.

The coat contained not a single clew as to the ident.i.ty of the stranger, not a hint of his regular place of residence, whence he had come or whither he was going.

It held but one object--a letter which the boy when pursued by the depot guardians had shown to Ralph the morning previous, and which at that time with considerable astonishment Ralph had observed bore the superscription: "Mr. John Fairbanks."

He had thought of the letter and wondered at its existence, the possible sender, the singular messenger, a score of times since he had attempted to take it from the dead-head pa.s.senger of the 10.15.

Now he held it in his grasp, but Ralph handled it gingerly. The envelope was soaking wet, just as was the coat and the pocket he had taken it from. As he removed it from its resting place he observed that the poor ink of the superscription had run, and the letters of the address were faded and fast disappearing.

To open it with any hope of removing its contents intact in its present condition was clearly impossible. Ralph held it carefully against the sunlight. Its envelope was thin, and he saw dark patches and blurs inside, indicating that the writing there had run also.

"I had better let it dry before I attempt to open it," decided Ralph, and he placed it on a smooth board near the well in the full focus of the bright sunshine.

A good deal hinged on that letter, he told himself. It would at all events settle the ident.i.ty of his dead father's correspondent, again it would divulge who it was that had sent the letter and the messenger, and thus the unfortunate's friends could be found. It would take a little time to dry out the soggy envelope, and Ralph paced about the garden paths, whistling softly to himself and thinking hard over the queer happenings of the past twenty-four hours.

As he pa.s.sed the window of the little sitting room, he tiptoed the gravel path up to it and glanced in.

His mother still sat in the rocker, but she had fallen into a slight doze, and her sewing lay idle in her lap. Ralph, transferring his gaze to the armchair where they had so comfortably bestowed the invalid, fairly started with astonishment.

"Why, he isn't there!" breathed Ralph in some alarm, and ran around to the entrance by the kitchen door.

At its threshold Ralph paused, enchained by the unexpected picture there disclosed to his view.

The injured boy stood at the sink. He had found and tied about his waist a work ap.r.o.n belonging to Mrs. Fairbanks. Before him was the dishpan half-full of water, and he had washed and wiped neatly and quickly the dishes from the tray.