Sard came into Dunstan's room with the mail. The nurse, a calm-faced, serious woman of mature years, smiled at her. "I'm glad you've come; we're getting a little sick of each other."

The haggard face of the boy looked out from the surgeon's trestlework of the fractured arm and shoulder. "Drool!" said the weak voice querulously. "Drool! she means that I've been nagging her until she's half crying." The lad looked his sick mortification; he knew he could not control his peevishness, not just yet. He tried to cover it with the old impishness. "Never mind, Miss Crayden, try to imagine I'm your husband; let me, the tender partner of your life, wipe up the floor with you."

In spite of the humorous quirk around the mouth, the nurse seemed glad to get away. She did not deny his self-accusation. "If you're going to be around for a while," to the sister, "I think I'll just take a brisk walk."

"Take a brisk walk" after the all-night vigil, "take a brisk walk" that late August day with its breathless depths of dusty overgrowth, its sultry world of tapestried leaf hangings. The thing made the youthful ones smile. Dunce looked after the retreating form, firm and crisp in its white uniform, murmuring—"A brisk walk—at ninety-two in the shade."

"She kids herself along pretty well, doesn't she?" demanded the invalid; then as his weak voice went into a squeak,—"Say, how long I got to hang here like a dry worm on the end of a fish-hook? Oh, Sard, when does this rotten weakness end? Say, why don't you get me some dog poison and put me out of my misery?"

There was a haunted look in the boy's eyes that tried to smile listlessly as he pawed over his mail. "Letter from Bumpy Dodge asking about college. Well, I guess I don't get back to college—— No, Bumpy, old sport, I guess I do a turn in jail, what?" He looked questioningly at his sister. "Nothing from Minga, I suppose? Well, I don't blame her; I did get her into a mess, the newspaper rot and all. I wonder," said Dunstan soberly, "what I was thinking of," he looked at Sard curiously, "I wonder if I thought at all. I don't believe I did think—I just felt, and feeling isn't the whole show, I guess. Well, Minga and I certainly gummed the game." The figure lying trussed in a bower of splints and bandages was silent a moment. "Gimme a cigarette, Sardine," then, at her denying look, "Why, haven't they lifted the ban yet? Say, when does this surgeon Sunday-school end, anyway? You'd think those tinkering old 'Docs' were women the way they go on. Why, in the war they gave the chaps cigarettes in their very coffins, and me with just a cracked rib and a little allegro adrumata medulla medusa Madonna crackiosis—can't have a smoke."

It was not the old Dunce so much as his determined imitation of the Dunce that had been. A young chap of nineteen cannot go through the experience of having a man of his own age shot to death across his knees without some changes which, in spite of modern science, we will assume are more than chemical. With the sinking down of Terence O'Brien's fair, curly head, his gasping, his blood sprinkled over the car in its crazy speed, the crash, their own capture, and in his own mortal pain seeing the fugitive lying beside him, blood pouring out of his mouth, his eyes closing on the warm summer sunset—with this picture, Dunstan's inner youth closed. His boy's body, badly cracked and shaken, could be mended, made almost perfect again, but his soul with the one great wound in it now stood up and commanded strong meat for its sustenance. Under the law! Dunstan must now stand face to face with law!

In his first interview with his father, with his knowledge of the process of this law, came the sense of rising to punishment that he felt able, nay, glad to meet. After almost twenty years, and twenty years did not seem long against the years Terry had lost, after twenty years of glad life Dunstan instead of bringing freedom had brought death to the wild, young Irish lad; he, who had had the advantages of education, of some measured temperate views of life; he, who for a reckless impulse had not considered what it is a man or woman puts in motion when they start out to defy the accepted law, now saw reasons for law.

Such parts of the long frame as were not pinned in plaster writhed. Dunstan's thoughts went to Minga—what did she think of it all? Did she feel the same way, like one carrying a great burden? The bullet of the guard who had shot Terry had barely escaped Minga's head before the car had overturned and he, Dunstan, who ought by his very man's nature to have protected her, had brought her into all this. Oh, he was a nice chap, a splendid fellow. Ah, well, civilization was a trap anyway, a scheme, a plan to defeat frank square things. The thing to do was to cast off the whole silly rot, get off somewhere, where a man got out of the cheap lying pattern of things, where a man really lived, realized himself, rode, killed, loved, hated without a pink worsted design to remind him that he had "broken the law."

Sard looked over at him. "Stop squirming!" she ordered sternly, then—"Dear old Pirate, don't you know that convalescing is the hardest time of all?" She went over to the bed, scrutinizing her brother. "Is the light in your eyes?" she asked anxiously. "Shall I read to you? Do you want a fresh drink?"

"I want a fresh Hades," growled the invalid. "I want——" All of a sudden Dunstan's face broke; he could not move, but lay here shaking. The girl, looking away from him, was silent.

"If Minga would only write," at last he groaned.

"Perhaps she doesn't know what to say," comforted the sister.

"Dunce," said Sard thoughtfully; she stood by the bed. "Dunce," in a mild patience unlike her, "I guess you and I are up against it, aren't we? We must have, somewhere, ancestors not like Dad and little Mother and Aunt Aurelia, race-horse ancestors that wanted things to happen and to happen quick bang, right off, and they don't, they just won't. No matter what we do, we have to wait, no matter how much we care," said Sard slowly, "we just have to wait; everybody has to wait, I guess. It's a sort of law."

"Terry didn't wait," said Dunce bitterly; "he, thank God, got out."

"I've been reading," she returned thoughtfully, she was trying to draw him out of this mood, "a book that tells how Venice grew up out of the sea; and it seems like life somehow. The streams came down from the mountains carrying grains, just grains, Dunce, of sand, and the ice and snow rolled down more clay and sand, all the currents of the sea kept carrying deposits to one spot until," absorbedly the girl recounted the dreamy geologic tale, her eyes fixed on distance. Dunstan heard her through patiently.

"Sounds like the rags old Colter used to chew," he said, not uninterestedly. "By the way, Sard, what became of that mucker; turned out to be a ne'er-do-well, after all? What?"

His companion was silent. Something in her face contracted as she tried to answer lightly. "Oh, I guess he's all right. Mr. Shipman has been following him up. He was ill after he left here. Then he went to work somewhere, and then I don't exactly know," said Sard. "Mr. Shipman is keeping his eye on him. I don't exactly know——"

The invalid tried to change his position. "That so? Got him work, did he?" he asked. "Say, ain't Shipman the dear old prophet? By Gad, Sardine, what makes a gray-headed chap like that and what makes an old spinny like Miss Crayden homely, you know, and out of the game, what makes 'em do all they can for you and not cuss you back when you cuss and not let you get the blue devils, but hold umbrellas of hope over you and keep reminding you of another You that's back of you, sort of, and ringing up your good deeds like spiritual fares and everything. Say," said Dunstan earnestly, "I want to know. These old-timers, there ain't much in it for them. They must know it. Why in thunder do they keep making everybody on the Merry-go-round think they are going to get the Gold Ring?"

His sister laughed. Sard, perching on Dunstan's bed, thoughtfully traced out the pattern of the white counterpane. The girl, thinner, with a look of limpid patience in the brook-clear eyes, tried to answer the question to herself. What, indeed, had made Shipman, who she had guessed was a baffled, lonely man, turn from his own concerns to help and encourage her? Why should he, to whom she could give nothing, keep the dark eyes with their look of "courage" so fixed upon her that even when he was not there she saw the look, heard the words and knew that the lawyer's strength and help were hers to call upon? Sard did not know that Watts Shipman, after Colter's collapse and his subsequent recovery and revelations, had been to Judge Bogart's with astounding news. The lawyer had sat in the Judge's library giving fact after fact of the distinction, nay, the actual academic fame of the Judge's hired man.

"He's chipper enough now," he placidly told the Judge; "he's enormously improved! Last time I saw him he was walking up and down the campus at a reunion, laughing and talking with old comrades." The lawyer fixed rather scrutinizing eyes on his superior. "You wouldn't," he said tentatively, "I beg your pardon if I interfere, but your daughter is so noble, so superb a little fighter. You wouldn't stand in the way now—of anything?"

There was a long silence. The Judge, some obstinacy in his throat, sat staring ahead of him. The new sense of Sard, a girl, a young unformed girl, having somehow gotten at the fine intelligence and soul that had dwelt concealed in this man, staggered him.

Meticulously Shipman had given him every detail. Dr. Martin Ledyard's heroic effort to save his friends from the terrible scourge of Congo smallpox, the desertion of the natives with canoes, the subsequent shock of learning of his brother's trouble and suicide, the fever in the hospital, his sudden rising and escape with only the clothes he wore from the beginning of convalescence, the tale of his long wandering from farm to farm, the half sustained body and mind a blank, the exposure and terror of a partial memory, were things that Shipman had gotten from Ledyard's own lips bit by bit, and they had been confirmed by the specialist to whom the lawyer had taken Colter. That the eminent scientist had completely recovered, a recovery that had begun the very hour that Sard had recognized him as he sat on the village curb for what he was, was an established medical fact. "Surely," Watts Shipman leaned forward, the face he bent on the Judge was solemn, "you could not interfere with your daughter's happiness now. Ledyard," said the lawyer mildly, "is not likely to come to her until he has your permission."

"Sard," said the Judge, his eyes had a light of the book of Moses in them, "Sard is to come to her father and acknowledge her impatience and disrespect."

"Pshaw!" The lawyer rose. He walked to the window and looked out. Then, his mouth torn between rage and amusement, he said politely, "Ahem! I don't exactly see how she could under the circumstances do that exact thing."

"That is all I ask," said the Judge finally. No sense of the ridiculous came to his rescue. He got up, went to a bookshelf and took down book after book, examined its cover for dust and blemish, and returned it without opening to the shelf. It was a curious habit of the Judge's to do this when deep in thought. Somehow it was like his treatment of human beings, thought Shipman.

"As for my son," remarked the gray-lipped mouth, "he will learn, he will learn something about the Law." Judge Bogart went back to his chair. He sat down, stretched out his legs and fixed his look upon the other man. "He will learn something about the Law," said he implacably. "I have done nothing to spare him," said the Judge with an air of satisfaction.

Yet Dunstan's first interview with his father had not had all this quality of implacability. The boy's fever over, his limbs lightened of certain casts and the eyes deep and haunted, were things to meet which the older man had braced, things from which the Judge, with all his hardness, had shrunk; even the judicial habit could not overlook the danger the Judge had been in, of losing his son, the man who bore his name. With a curious sense of pride he, himself, could not understand, a perception of the absurd gallantry, the chivalry underlying the actions of a fool breaker of laws, the old man, his own prerogatives negatived, had fairly to screw up his courage to begin the interview as he determined it should be begun.

"You know that you will have to meet the penalty," he rasped.

The dark eyes met the gooseberry ones squarely.

"Yes, sir, I've looked the thing up."

"It is likely," said the Judge dryly, "that you will have to give up college and go into business, if indeed you are spared incarceration. The fine is very heavy; you are, in spite of bail, under arrest."

At the word "incarceration" a swift gleam in Dunstan's eyes gave his father absurd hope. He was not injured, then—he was—all right—that was the old impudence, curse it.

"I shall be glad," said the young fellow slowly, "to take any penalty that is rightfully mine, that would come to any man that did what I did, that had," the boy gulped a moment, "that had broken the law he lived under."

"Ah," the old gray face, the hard-boiled eyes, looked watchfully upon the young face with its fierce pride—"then you realize that you were a fool, that you risked my name, your own honor, to save from just punishment a ruffian who had broken the law?"

Something wild, desperate, leaped into the face on the pillows; it was a hurt, appealing look, different from Sard's fiery pride and steady intention; it was not so defiant, it was the more helpless and miserable, as who would say, "I am punished enough." The Judge's eyes on the thin young face at sight of this look felt a sudden strange pang. It reminded him of—

"We love Foddy—Foddy won't put us in prison with the naughty prisoners."

Oh, little woman lips; oh, soft little hands and sweet voice; oh, hundred innocent tendernesses and faiths and needs——

The Judge stared at his son; the dark eyes closed and Dunstan lay there like death, only one long, thin hand clenched and unclenched on his chest.

They rise up sometimes, these who were our forbears and become our good angels; when we need them and call sincerely they rise up in our eyes and hearts and speak for us. If we have kept the house garnished and clean only the best of them will come to us bearing in their hands lamps to light our paths; when we call out in sheer agony for light and leading, all the noblest and fairest of our line rise up for a hundred comforting and strengthening ministries, to lead us on our blind path. Dunstan's mother, standing in his lad's eyes, had risen once and looked at her husband. "Dearest," said the little timid voice, "what are you doing with my son—our boy? Treat our little Dunstan fairly."

For a long time the old Judge stood at the window, the gray lips trembling, the gooseberry eyes desperately blinking. "The heart bowed down with weight of woe," thought the Judge, "I will go down and play that record—she—she was fond of it."

At last he turned toward his son's bed. "There," said the Judge. He cleared his throat with a rasp that could have been heard in the garage. "Hum—I—I guess I've been breaking a law, too, hey?" He glanced up at the nurse who had just entered. "I don't want to disobey the doctor's laws." He stood for a moment looking down at his son. "I have a letter from that little vixen Minga," said Dunstan's father; then as he saw the slow red creep into the boy's cheek, "I think—ahem—I think she shows character—she seems to realize that her conduct was—I'll send it up to you," said the Judge. He held out his hand. "You and I must protect Minga," he said slowly; "we must keep her out of this thing. Hey, What? Have her out here, hey? Cheer us up some—hey—What?"

The two men looked at each other; under their differing ages was the same cool facing of facts. Dunstan did not turn from his knowledge of himself, a man who had incurred the penalty of the law; neither did the Judge as father turn from that fact. Facts are sometimes the most wholesome curative things of life. When two people resolutely face them together, with the same degree of earnestness and honesty, they construct a bridge over great abysses of distrust, misunderstanding and heart-break.

The Judge started for the door. "Take care of yourself," he said as he looked wistfully at those dark eyes that had held just for one moment the dear wife's look. Then the Judge remembered Dunstan's love of a joke. "If you ever steal a murderer again," he said, "I'll thrash you within an inch of your life."

It was a joke! It was made with an effort; the very machinery creaked and the finished product looked dusty and wizened, but it was a joke! Dunstan, the dark-eyed humorist, saw it and grinned. The Judge returned to the bed. Two hands went spontaneously out, a grim, dry, purple one and a slim, thin, weak one. They clinched—then the door closed and the Judge went down-stairs.

Late that evening Miss Bogart heard the phonograph circling forth the "heart bowed down with weight of woe."... She turned another page in the "pleasant" book. "My poor brother," said Miss Aurelia to herself; "he seems to turn naturally to the—er—melancholy—but I should think," the lady thought sleepily, "that now that Colter isn't Colter at all, but the celebrated scientist Dr. Ledyard, that he, she, they——"