In the single room of his shanty Lord Chesterfield lit his lamp, and truly light never fell upon a stranger boyhood shelter. For the hermit's rude bed was neatly made and the floor as neatly swept, his battered cookstove polished and the medicine bottles upon his rickety table ranged in a careful row. And once the busy hermit had raked his fire into a bright and warming glow, for all its lonely rattling when the wind blew, the river shanty was as snug and neat a place as one might find.

Now as Lord Chesterfield bustled energetically about the fire, there came a whining and a scratching at the shanty door and, as he opened it, a huge dog limped slowly in with a joyous bark of greeting. With ready affection in his eyes, the hermit bent and patted the shaggy brown head of his visitor, for this was Carlo, the toll-gate keeper's old and rheumatic pensioner, who nightly limped up the tow-path to be properly bathed and petted. And the dialogue of the gallant Doctor and his patient-in-chief barely varied.

"Good evening, Carlo!" (very brisk and professional).

A joyous bark.

"And how is the rheumatism to-night?"

A very great wagging of a very bushy tail but a bark of considerable uncertainty.

"Hum! Well, well, we'll have to attend to that. Step right over this way if you please!" And the Doctor, frowning portentously, bathed Carlo's flank ever so gently, with now and then a kindly word of reassurance. These medical attentions properly completed, Carlo, whose sense of professional etiquette was none too keen, fell to nosing frankly about the hut until he found a certain plate of scraps, and having neatly attended to this single spot of disorder, he limped back to the hermit and suggestively lowered his handsome head. Whereupon the Doctor removed a very small package tied to his collar and grandly bowed his patient to the door.

A blast of wind rattled the shanty as Carlo departed. On tiptoe the hermit locked the door, carefully drew the shades, and with infinite caution removed a plank from the floor. Very furtively he drew forth a dirty canvas bag, pitifully small for all its pleasant clink and unwrapped Carlo's package, a coin which Carlo's kindly master nightly sent for Carlo's fee. Then together with such coins as he could spare from the day's proceeds this provident little hermit hid them all away again in the canvas bag beneath the plank, for this was the hidden hoard that Lord Chesterfield fancied would one day make him a very great doctor.

And as the final task of the busy evening, the hermit wrote a letter.

"December 18th.

"Dear Mr. Robert Loring:

"She got your letter and cried and she most alwus never cries so shaky, Aunt Cheerful Loring I mean. Oh, please do come! She feels so awful bad and once when I was awful sick this winter she lived three days in this old shanty here with me and sat up all night account of medacines and no other bed and she read me every day bout Lord Chesterfield and I'd like to do something big for her she's so awful brave and so awful lame. Sometimes like to-night when I looked in the winda she sings to keep her spirits up. Oh, please, please Mr. Loring, can't we maybe surprise her for Christmas? I do most everything I can for her but just one thing you could do would be more than all. Five years is awful long. Most likely you won't know who I am unless she wrote. She calls me Lord Chesterfield and lots of folks here call me Doc and the hermut but, sir, I have the honer to sine myself—

"Norman Varian."

For so Lord Chesterfield fancied his illustrious namesake might finish such a letter.

And as he sealed the letter, the boy looked wistfully up at a ragged photograph of his dead father tacked carefully above the table and very slowly he read aloud the single line of writing beneath it.

"Always remember, little son," it read, "that first of all, though you've seen hard times, you're a gentleman!"

And suddenly Lord Chesterfield's brave little head went forward upon his hands with a choking sob, for after all he was only a proud and lonely little bachelor who had greatly loved his father.

So the little hermit's letter went forth upon a Christmas mission to come to its final goal in a luxurious suite of offices in Denver on the desk of Robert Loring. And Robert Loring read the eloquent plea with unwonted color in his face and a startled shame in his fine eyes, for, unconsciously vivid, the boy's letter had strikingly bared the inner life of his brave and cheerful mother.

"Five years!" said Robert Loring aghast. "It can't be!"

But swiftly reviewing the years crowded with activity he knew that the little hermit had written the truth, and he flushed again. For the thought of his mother's lonely life in Pine Tree Lane subtly dwarfed the urgent calls of effort and ambition which had kept him from her. A giant hand of rebuke indeed that Lord Chesterfield had wielded.

So, swiftly over the night wires went a telegram to one Norman Varian, and even as Robert Loring wrote the lad's name, he stared at it very thoughtfully.