"We'll have to break it to him very gently," he said. "And he mustn't see me like this. If you can find some of my clothes and Reynolds'

razor, I'll--" He caught suddenly to the back of a chair and held on to it. "I haven't taken time to eat much to-day," he said, smiling at her.

"I guess I need food, Aunt Lucy."

For the first time then she saw his clothes, his shabbiness and his pallor, and perhaps she guessed the truth. She got up, her face twitching, and pushed him into a chair.

"You sit here," she said, "and leave the door closed. The nurse is out for a walk, and she'll be in soon. I'll bring some milk and cookies now, and start the fire. I've got some chops in the house."

When she came back almost immediately, with the familiar tray and the familiar food, he was sitting where she had left him. He had spent the entire time, had she known it, in impressing on his mind the familiar details of the room, to carry away with him.

She stood beside him, a hand on his shoulder, to see that he drank the milk slowly.

"I've got the fire going," she said. "And I'll run up now and get your clothes. I--had put them away." Her voice broke a little. "You see, we--You can change in your laboratory. Richard, can't you? If you go upstairs he'll hear you."

He reached up and caught her hand. That touch, too, of the nearest to a mother's hand that he had known, he meant to carry away with him. He could not speak.

She bustled away, into her bright kitchen first, and then with happy stealth to the store-room. Her very heart was singing within her. She neither thought nor reasoned. d.i.c.k was back, and all would be well.

If she had any subconscious anxieties they were quieted, also subconsciously, by confidence in the men who were fighting his battle for him, by Walter Wheeler and Ba.s.sett and Harrison Miller. That d.i.c.k himself would present any difficulty lay beyond her worst fears.

She had been out of the room only twenty minutes when she returned to David and prepared to break her great news. At first she thought he was asleep. He was lying back with his eyes closed and his hands crossed on the prayer-book. But he looked up at her, and was instantly roused to full attention by her face.

"You've had some news," he said.

"Yes, David. There's a little news. Don't count too much on it. Don't sit up. David, I have heard something that makes me think he is alive.

Alive and well."

He made a desperate effort and controlled himself.

"Where is he?"

She sat down beside him and took his hand between hers.

"David," she said slowly, "G.o.d has been very good to us. I want to tell you something, and I want you to prepare yourself. We have heard from d.i.c.k. He is all right. He loves us, as he always did. And--he is downstairs, David."

He lay very still and without speaking. She was frightened at first, afraid to go on with her further news. But suddenly David sat up in bed and in a full, firm voice began the Te Deum Laudamus. "We praise thee, O G.o.d: we acknowledge thee to be the Lord. All the earth doth worship thee, the Father everlasting."

He repeated it in its entirety. At the end, however, his voice broke.

"O Lord, in thee have I trusted--I doubted Him, Lucy," he said.

d.i.c.k, waiting at the foot of the stairs, heard that triumphant paean of thanksgiving and praise and closed his eyes.

It was a few minutes later that Lucy came down the stairs again.

"You heard him?" she asked. "Oh, d.i.c.k, he had frightened me. It was more than a question of himself and you. He was making it one of himself and G.o.d."

She let him go up alone and waited below, straining her ears, but she heard nothing beyond David's first hoa.r.s.e cry, and after a little she went into her sitting-room and shut the door.

Whatever lay underneath, there was no surface drama in the meeting. The determination to ignore any tragedy in the situation was strong in them both, and if David's eyes were blurred and his hands trembling, if d.i.c.k's first words were rather choked, they hid their emotion carefully.

"Well, here I am, like a bad penny!" said d.i.c.k huskily from the doorway.

"And a long time you've been about it," grumbled David. "You young rascal!"

He held out his hand, and d.i.c.k crushed it between both of his. He was startled at the change in David. For a moment he could only stand there, holding his hand, and trying to keep his apprehension out of his face.

"Sit down," David said awkwardly, and blew his nose with a terrific blast. "I've been laid up for a while, but I'm all right now. I'll fool them all yet," he boasted, out of his happiness and content. "Business has been going to the dogs, d.i.c.k. Reynolds is a fool."

"Of course you'll fool them." There was still a band around d.i.c.k's throat. It hurt him to look at David, so thin and feeble, so sunken from his former portliness. And David saw his eyes, and knew.

"I've dropped a little flesh, eh, d.i.c.k?" he inquired. "Old bulge is gone, you see. The nurse makes up the bed when I'm in it, flat as when I'm out."

Suddenly his composure broke. He was a feeble and apprehensive old man, shaken with the tearless sobbing of weakness and age. d.i.c.k put an arm across his shoulders, and they sat without speech until David was quiet again.

"I'm a crying old woman, d.i.c.k," David said at last. "That's what comes of never feeling a pair of pants on your legs and being coddled like a baby." He sat up and stared around him ferociously. "They sprinkle violet water on my pillows, d.i.c.k! Can you beat that?"

Warned by Lucy, the nurse went to her room and did not disturb them.

But she sat for a time in her rocking-chair, before she changed into the nightgown and kimono in which she slept on the couch in David's room.

She knew the story, and her kindly heart ached within her. What good would it do after all, this home-coming? d.i.c.k could not stay. It was even dangerous. Reynolds had confided to her that he suspected a watch on the house by the police, and that the mail was being opened. What good was it?

Across the hall she could hear Lucy moving briskly about in d.i.c.k's room, changing the bedding, throwing up the windows, opening and closing bureau drawers. After a time Lucy tapped at her door and she opened it.

"I put a cake of scented soap among your handkerchiefs," she said, rather breathlessly. "Will you let me have it for Doctor d.i.c.k's room?"

She got the soap and gave it to her.

"He is going to stay, then?"

"Certainly he is going to stay," Lucy said, surprised. "This is his home. Where else should he go?"

But David knew. He lay, listening with avid interest to d.i.c.k's story, asking a question now and then, nodding over d.i.c.k's halting attempt to reconstruct the period of his confusion, but all the time one part of him, a keen and relentless inner voice, was saying: "Look at him well.

Hold him close. Listen to his voice. Because this hour is yours, and perhaps only this hour."

"Then the Sayre woman doesn't know about your coming?" he asked, when d.i.c.k had finished.

"Still, she mustn't talk about having seen you. I'll send Reynolds up in the morning."

He was eager to hear of what had occurred in the long interval between them, and good, bad and indifferent d.i.c.k told him. But he limited himself to events, and did not touch on his mental battles, and David saw and noted it. The real story, he knew, lay there, but it was not time for it. After a while he raised himself in his bed.

"Call Lucy, d.i.c.k."

When she had come, a strangely younger Lucy, her withered cheeks flushed with exercise and excitement, he said:

"Bring me the copy of the statement I made to Harrison Miller, Lucy."

She brought it, patted d.i.c.k's shoulder, and went away. David held out the paper.

"Read it slowly, boy," he said. "It is my justification, and G.o.d willing, it may help you. The letter is from my brother, Henry. Read that, too."

Lucy, having got d.i.c.k's room in readiness, sat down in it to await his coming. Downstairs, in the warming oven, was his supper. His bed, with the best blankets, was turned down and ready. His dressing-gown and slippers were in their old accustomed place. She drew a long breath.