The Carsons and the Paces, with Azalea, came driving home one chilly evening in a light fall of rain. They were tired and cold and had altogether an after-the-picnic sort of feeling. Indeed, when Azalea, who was to stay in the valley for the night, and Annie Laurie had helped the aunts into the house, they found them so travelworn that they insisted that they should get into bed at once and have their suppers brought to them.

A few weeks before, Aunt Adnah would have perished rather than submit to such an indignity, no matter how comfortable she found it. And Aunt Zillah would not have indulged in such a luxury with her sister’s stern eye upon her. But more and more Annie Laurie’s determined will was having its way in that household, and when to her command was added Azalea’s importunities, the aunts yielded.

Sam had the fires burning for them in a few minutes, and as the old ladies undressed and toasted their shins before the blaze, and thought of the two competent young girls down in the kitchen who were preparing supper for them, they experienced the luxurious feeling of those who are old, well-loved, and carefully looked after.

“If they were girls who would be getting everything out of its place,” said Miss Zillah to Miss Adnah, “I don’t suppose we’d feel as comfortable as we do; but they take hold just as we would ourselves. I’m bound to say that I wouldn’t know how to stand on my feet to get supper to-night.”

“And here Annie Laurie has filled those new fangled water bottles for us, and looked out our warmest nightgowns. We certainly have a lot to be thankful for, Zillah. When brother passed away I thought that I would just naturally step in and take charge of things—I believed I had the strength for it and the brains for it,—but it seems it was not to be. Whether it was the shock of Simeon’s death or merely that I’m getting old, I wouldn’t undertake to say, but certainly I’m not the woman I was. Why, suddenly when I think to be the strongest, I find myself all shaky in the knees and confused in the head.”

“It’s just the nervous shock, sister. You’ll be all right by and by. Trouble is like sickness, it takes a while to recuperate from it.”

There was a knock at the door and Annie Laurie entered bearing a tray. Behind her was Azalea with another. Tea, toast, little golden omelettes, preserves and other dainties tempting to the appetites of two jaded old ladies appeared on the best dishes and the whitest napery that could be found in the Pace household.

“My, my, what a fuss you make over us,” said Aunt Adnah, disapprovingly. “I’m sure the common dishes would have done perfectly well, Ann.”

Annie Laurie shook her finger at her aunt.

“Don’t you call me Ann,” she laughed. “The best dishes are none too good for you two; and anyway, we’re celebrating because we’re home!”

Aunt Zillah narrowed her eyes in a way she had.

“You’re sure you love your home, child, now that there are only us two old souls in it, and that we’re so poor and all?”

“Of course I love my home,” declared Annie Laurie. “I should say I did! And we’re not going to be poor. I simply won’t be poor. And I don’t feel poor anyway. It’s so meachin to feel poor! Please don’t use the word, Aunt. How can you, when we have a fire like this and suppers as good as those on the trays, and when we can ask a friend in whenever we please, and go on lovely vacations? Poor!”

She gave a little shiver of disgust at the word.

“Well, I’m sure you do put heart into one,” sighed Aunt Zillah, as if she needed all the good cheer that anybody could spare her. “Sometimes I do think we’re falling off in our spirits, Adnah and I.”

The girls stood laughing and talking with the aunts a few minutes more, and then ran down to get their own suppers.

“Let’s eat it before the living room fire,” said Azalea. “We’ll put it on the sewing table.”

“And we’ll have Sam to eat with us. He simply must, that’s all, we’ve so much to tell him,” added Annie Laurie.

It was a much easier thing for Azalea to cook the supper than it was for Annie Laurie to persuade Sam to come in and eat with them. But the bright-faced girl, with her good will shining in her face, succeeded in overcoming his scruples. It was very hard for so social a creature as Sam to keep to himself, holding before himself the hard fact:

“I am the son of a man who is under suspicion. I must not be the friend of honest folk until I am proved of an honest family.”

To-night, at any rate, he permitted himself to forget. So, while the rain dashed against the windowpane, the three sat, warm and dry, in the familiar room and ate their supper, while the girls told stories of the curious people they had seen, and of the nice and interesting ones, and of dangers from which they had thrillingly escaped.

In the midst of it there came a knock at the door.

“I’ll go,” said Annie Laurie, “I’m nearest. Who can it be on such a night?”

She flung wide the door, and then as the other two turned to see who it was, she half closed it again, involuntarily, and stepped back. Something was the matter, Sam perceived as he started to his feet; then he saw Annie Laurie fling open the door again and back away from it.

“Come in,” she said in a strange voice.

And a man entered with a curiously swift movement, almost as if he were hunted. The rain ran from his clothes and his beard; he was covered with red clay, and he seemed to shrink from observation. Yet after a second he took off his hat, and then Sam saw that it was his father. Mr. Disbrow came into the room at last and closed the door behind him.

“Father!” Sam breathed, but Annie Laurie held up her hand and Sam said no more. She seemed for the moment to be carried out of herself, and to cease to be a very young and inexperienced girl, and to take on the grave look of one who was sitting in judgment.

Disbrow’s eyes, usually so wavering, fixed themselves on Annie Laurie’s. They were quite on a level, these two, as to height, but the man looked broken and beaten; the girl was strong and free and, in her simple way, proud. She stood there waiting, and Disbrow came on toward her.

“Come in,” she said in a strange voice

“I’ve come to make it up to you, miss,” he said with trembling lips. “I’ve come to give back what I took from you.”

Above the crackling of the fire and the beating of the rain on the windows they heard her say:“I am glad.”

The man tore off his dripping coat, and taking a knife from his pocket, began cutting at the lining. He took out package after package of bills and laid them on the table. And still he clipped, and still the money appeared from the wadded lining of the coat. Then he flung the coat on a chair.

“I’ll leave it there,” he said. “If there is more you can find it.” He folded his arms and looked at the girl.

“Well, that’s over,” he said. “I tried to go on with the plan I’d laid out for myself, but I couldn’t sleep for thinking I was a thief. And then a voice came from Heaven and told me so. Don’t smile at that, miss—my poor wife heard the voice, and Hannah heard it. I’ve left them out in the mountains and God only knows what will come to them, for I reckon you’ll be wanting to hand me over to the sheriff.”

“Oh, Mr. Disbrow,” cried Annie Laurie, “you know I’ll not do anything of the kind. I couldn’t do such a thing to an old neighbor, and to Sam’s father at that!”

Disbrow raised one arm in the air.

“I’ll make a clean breast of everything now,” he said in his deep quavering voice. “Sam ain’t my boy; nor he ain’t my wife’s boy. He’s taken from the asylum, Sam is. We thought we wasn’t going to have a child, and we took him and never told him. Anybody could see he wa’n’t our boy, if they’d had sense.”

Annie Laurie half turned. There was a consuming pity in her heart, and a great hope that Sam would not disappoint her. And he did not. He took three strides and stood by the man he had all his life called father.

“I reckon we won’t go back on the relationship,” he said. “If you took me out of an asylum and cared for me when I was little, I don’t mean to go back on you just now, sir, when you’re—when you’re down on your luck.”

“He’s not down on his luck,” said Annie Laurie in her clear tones. “He’s a lucky man to have the courage to bring back the thing he took that wasn’t his, Sam. Not everyone could have done it. You ought to feel proud of a father who could do that, Sam.”

“I am,” said Sam. “I’m mighty proud of him.”

Their youth, and the generosity of their youth, their desire to do the best they could for each other’s sake, had winged them up to that high place where Mercy sits. Azalea, watching them, thrilled to think they were her friends. They were doing precisely what Ma McBirney would have wished them to do if she had been there to advise them. They were not being just—they were much, much better than just. They were merciful. Annie Laurie went on:

“I don’t know how much money there is there, sir,” she said, pointing to the pile of bills on the table, “but I am sure there is a good deal and that you have given me back all you took.”

“All but two hundred dollars, miss. I gave Sam a hundred, and I used a hundred myself. I’ll pay it back some day, if I can.”

“What I was going to say was that I want you to count out a thousand dollars of that money for yourself. I’m not going to lend it to you. I don’t want you to go on thinking you have a debt like that. I know you’ve had a hard time, Mr. Disbrow. Father used to speak of it and feel sorry; and I’ve felt dreadfully sorry for you times and times. Now, you’re to take a thousand and just pretend, if you like, that my father willed it to you, and then you’re to go away where you can begin over with a little shop, or farm, and make your way.”

Pretend that Simeon Pace had willed it to him—Simeon Pace whom he had hated because Pace was a successful man and he an unsuccessful one! And Pace had felt sorry for him! But if that was the case, why hadn’t he helped him? Yet Hector Disbrow knew why—he knew it was because of his lazy ways and his bitter tongue, and for the first time in his life he saw himself as his neighbors had seen him, as a hang-dog man whom it was anything but pleasant to meet. Yes, he had missed the road, someway. He hadn’t known how to find the House of Good Will. He had broken his wife’s spirit, and had darkened the lives of the two children who lived beneath his roof. He had made a failure of everything—had even sunk to be a thief. And now here was this girl giving him another chance. And Sam was saying that he’d still be his son!

He was cold and hungry, worn with sleeplessness, shaken with the memory of the terrible voice that had cried in the mist, and this unexpected kindness was too much for him. He had not meant to do it—did not know that he ever could do such a thing—but he burst into the sobs of a broken man, and when Sam had led him to a chair he dropped his head on the table and wept.

They talked together, the four of them, when Mr. Disbrow had grown calmer. Azalea would have left them, but Annie Laurie wanted her to stay. She held her hand and kept her close beside her.

“You understand everything, Azalea,” she whispered. “You don’t seem surprised at good times or at bad times, dear. You take things as they come. Stay with me, Azalea, I need you very much.”

“What will you do, miss?” Disbrow had asked. “Will you let the people know how you got your money back?”

Annie Laurie thought a moment.

“Don’t you think they have been suspecting you, Mr. Disbrow?” she asked.

The man nodded miserably.

“There wa’n’t a man in town would shake hands with me,” he confessed.

“And don’t you think,” went on the girl, “that they thought it fine of Sam to give up his school and to come back here and help out the aunts and myself?”

“They must have thought he was trying to give a square deal,” said Disbrow.

“Well, then,” Annie Laurie went on, holding tight to Azalea’s hand to gather courage, “I think I ought to tell them. It will let them know you were honest in your heart after all, and it will make them give Sam credit for what he’s done. I’m sure that’s the right way, Mr. Disbrow. When I was naughty I used to like to be punished—it made me feel fair and honest again. And you’ll feel better if the neighbors know. That will be your punishment. And what’s more, it will explain everything. I don’t want to have to tell a lie when I say how I got my money back. I never yet told a lie and I don’t want to begin now.”

The man bowed his head and sat staring into the fire.

“I reckon what you say is right,” he admitted.

Azalea had placed a heaping plate of food before him. She made hot coffee and urged him to drink it. And she found a pouch of tobacco and forced that on him. His clothes had dried before the hearty fire, and when he had lighted his pipe he began to feel master of himself again.

“I think, dad,” said Sam, “that the best thing for you to do is to get out of here to-night before you’re seen. I’ve some heavy new boots that you can wear and you can have my raincoat and sou’wester. That’s my advice—hit the trail to-night and get so far out of the way that none of your old neighbors will meet you. Settle in some live town over the mountain; put mother in a nice, light, little house—and whatever you do, don’t have green shades to the windows—and maybe she’ll get well again.”

“She’s better now,” said Mr. Disbrow. “Fifty percent better. But of course she looks with contempt on me. I don’t know whether she’ll let me go back to her or not, Sam.”

“Mother!” cried Sam. “Of course she will! You go back and don’t take no for an answer. You-all just hike over the mountain to a new place and get a new start all ’round. And one of the first things is to get Hannah’s eyes straightened. She can’t enjoy herself the way she is. It just spoils her life.”

“Yes, it does, Mr. Disbrow,” put in Azalea. “It makes her so shy that it’s terrible for her. Do say you’ll have her eyes made right.”

Disbrow looked up at Azalea with something almost like a smile. She was bending forward pleading with him, her own odd, intense look on her face. She did indeed seem to have a way of understanding the troubles of people.

“I’ll do it, miss,” he said, “and I’ll tell Hannah you-all told me to.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, then Mr. Disbrow turned his eyes on Sam and a deep flush spread over his face.

“It’s all right for you to say you’ll stand by me, son,” he said, “but if I go sneakin’ off and hidin’ away, how am I going to be able to stand by you? What will ’come of you, anyway?”

“Now don’t worry about me, sir,” Sam said independently; “I’ll get on somehow.”

“Oh, it’s going to be easy for Sam,” Annie Laurie broke in enthusiastically. “You see it’s this way. Now I have my money I’ll be able to pay for all the work he’s been doing for me, and he’ll keep right on working and saving up his money, and next October he’ll go back to the Rutherford Academy. It’s not so far away but that he can afford to run down here every week or two to go over the books, and he’ll get some good man in to take his place while he’s away. Vacations, he can take charge himself. Oh, we’ll get on now, Mr. Disbrow, both Sam and I, and we’ll have plenty of schooling too.”

Hector Disbrow looked at the tall boy sitting beside him and at the bright-faced girl who had spoken, and started to say something, but thought better of it and put his hand up to his mouth instead.

“Oh, yes,” he heard Azalea murmur. “They’ll get on now. Things are coming all right for them just as they have for me. There’s an end to trouble, isn’t there, if you just hang on and wait?”

“Well, there is, miss,” agreed Mr. Disbrow. “And now I reckon I better take the advice you all gave me and hike.”

“Are you going to walk, sir?” Sam asked.

“No, I’ve got one of the horses hid back here a ways. I’ll slip on him and get up the mountain before daybreak. Your ma and Hannah will be worrying about me, I reckon. Ma’s down on me, but that won’t keep her from worrying about me, you know.”

Sam nodded.“They’re sleeping in a little tent I rigged up for them—kind of half house, half tent. Durn it, I wish I could buy something to take to ’em. The food supply’s getting mighty low.”

“Have you saddle bags on your horse, Mr. Disbrow?” Annie Laurie asked.

“I reckon,” said Disbrow dryly, ashamed to test her generosity further.

“Then drive up to the storehouse door and we’ll be out with a lantern. I’ve enough food to feed a little army and you-all mustn’t go hungry while that’s the case.”

He avoided her look as he thanked her. Was she going to remember her offer to him of a thousand dollars? She surely was.

“Azalea,” she said, “count out the money I promised Mr. Disbrow.”

Azalea turned to the table where the fascinating rolls lay. There was indeed, much of it. Most of the bills were of the hundred dollar denomination. None of the children had seen anything like it—it was like looking into Aladdin’s cave to stand there beside that old table with rolls of bank notes. Perhaps each one of the young persons wished that it had been in gold instead of paper money, but even as it was it thrilled them. Azalea’s fingers trembled, as slowly and accurately she counted out the ten one hundred-dollar bills and handed them to Annie Laurie, who in turn gave them to Mr. Disbrow. He would have liked, in the shamed soul of him, to make some sort of a joke of it, but he could not and the cheap words he tried to speak died on his lips.

“Thank you—thank you,” was all he said.

“It’s not because you brought back my money,” Annie Laurie added, with something of the stern accent of her Aunt Adnah; “it’s because you’re an old neighbor, as I said, and because I’ve known you ever since I was a little girl and I have seen that things were hard for you. Most of all, it’s because Sam would like me to do it. That’s so, isn’t it, Sam; you like me to do it?”

“Oh, Annie Laurie,” Sam cried, choking, “I like you to do it.”

He lifted the old coat from the chair and helped his father into it, but it was soaking wet and he flung it down again.

“Wait,” he said; “I’ll be back with the dry things in a minute.”

So in the new, dry boots, a reefer, raincoat and storm hat—fed, warmed, forgiven, the man who had so failed went out from Annie Laurie’s door.

“We’ll be waiting at the storehouse for you,” she called after him. And half an hour later, with his saddle bags well filled, he was off up the mountain, never to come into their lives again.

“Come back by the fire,” pleaded Azalea. “Come, Sam, come back and get warm before you go to bed.”

“I don’t see how it can be so chilly again after all the lovely days we’ve had,” Annie Laurie remarked. She was deeply moved and glad of the opportunity to talk about something besides the man who had just ridden away from them.

So the three went in and sat before the fire.

“Oh, Sam,” said Azalea, “you didn’t ask Mr. Disbrow who your father really was.”

“I don’t suppose he knew,” Sam said, “and I’m not sure I want to.” He dropped his head in his hands and sat staring at the dying fire.

“Oh, well,” Annie Laurie said, “America’s for individuals. That’s what Mr. Summers says and that’s what I think too. And as an individual, Sam, you’ll pass muster, eh?”

Sam laughed rather bitterly.“Oh,” he half groaned, “I wish—”

“What?” asked Azalea.

“Oh, I don’t know what. I was just thinking what a queer, lonely trio we are—orphans, the three of us.”

“Yes,” said the girls, “that’s so.”

They sat for a time in silence, each absorbed in thought. The fire crackled a little now and then, and sank lower and lower. By and by Annie Laurie spoke softly—

“Yes,” she said, “we’re orphans, but I reckon we’ll be taken care of.”

“Oh, yes,” murmured Azalea’s soft voice. “I’m sure of it. Why Ma McBirney—”

“The rest of us have no Ma McBirney,” Sam reminded her.

But after all, though they were pensive, they were not unhappy. The feeling that they were close and trusted friends comforted them. High adventure seemed to be before them. The fortune, so curiously lost and so strangely regained lay there on the table by them. Sam and Azalea wondered that Annie Laurie did not count it to find out how much it was, but she seemed oddly indifferent to that fact. Only after a time she arose, brushed the bills into her apron and stood for a moment smiling.

“Sam,” she said shyly, “creep up to the attic, softly, so as not to disturb the aunts, and bring me down dad’s old tin arm!”

“Oh!” cried Sam, horrified.

“Please,” begged the girl.

So Sam brought it and the three laid the rolls of bills neatly within it.

“It will comfort father,” said Annie Laurie quaintly, “but to-morrow I’m going to put it in the bank.”