And later she had thrown her arms arpund her mother, exclaiming as she held her fast, "You haven't changed a single bit, Barby," and Barby answered gaily:

"What did you expect, dearest, in a few short weeks? White hair and spectacles?"

"But it doesn't seem like a few short weeks," sighed Georgina. "It seems as if years full of things had happened, and that I'm as old as you are."

Now as Uncle Darcy recounted some of these happenings, and Barby realized how many strange experiences Georgina had lived through during her absence, how many new acquaintances she had made and how much she had been allowed to go about by herself, she understood why the child felt so much older. She understood still better that night as she sat brushing Georgina's curls. The little girl on the footstool at her knee was beginning to reach up—was beginning to ask questions about the strange grown-up world whose sayings and doings are always so puzzling to little heads.

"Barby," she asked hesitatingly, "what do people mean exactly, when they say they have other fish to fry?"

"Oh, just other business to attend to or something else they'd rather do."

"But when they shrug their shoulders at the same time," persisted Georgina.

"A shrug can stand for almost anything," answered Barby. "Sometimes it says meaner things than words can convey."

Then came the inevitable question which made Georgina wish that she had not spoken.

"But why do you ask, dear? Tell me how the expression was used, and I can explain better."

Now Georgina could not understand why she had brought up the subject. It had been uppermost in her mind all evening, but every time it reached the tip of her tongue she drove it back. That is, until this last time. Then it seemed to say itself. Having gone this far she could not lightly change the subject as an older person might have done. Barby was waiting for an answer. It came in a moment, halting but truthful.

"That day I was at the Bazaar, you know, and everybody was saying how nice I looked, dressed up like a little girl of long ago, I heard Mrs. Whitman say to Miss Minnis that one would think that Justin Huntingdon would want to come home once or twice in a lifetime to see me; and Miss Minnis shrugged her shoulders, this way, and said:

"'Oh, he has other fish to fry.'"

Georgina, with her usual aptitude for mimicry, made the shrug so eloquent that Barby understood exactly what Miss Minnis intended to convey, and what it had meant to the wondering child.

"Miss Minnis is an old cat!" she exclaimed impatiently. Then she laid down the brush, and gathering Georgina's curls into one hand, turned her head so that she could look into the troubled little face.

"Tell me, Baby," she demanded. "Have you heard anyone else say things like that?"

"Yes," admitted Georgina, "several times. And yesterday a woman who came into the bakery while I was getting the rolls Tippy sent me for, asked me if I was Doctor Huntingdon's little girl. And when I said yes, she asked me when he was coming home."

"And what did you say?"

"Well, I thought she hadn't any right to ask, specially in the way she made her question sound. She doesn't belong in this town, anyhow. She's only one of the summer boarders. So I drew myself up the way the Duchess always did in 'The Fortunes of Romney Tower.' Don't you remember? and I said, 'It will probably be some time, Madam.' Then I took up my bag of hot rolls and marched out. I think that word Madam always sounds so freezing, when you say it the way the Duchess was always doing."

"Oh, you ridiculous baby!" exclaimed Barby, clasping her close and kissing her again and again. Then seeing the trouble still lingering in the big brown eyes, she took the little face between her hands and looked into it long and intently, as if reading her thoughts.

"Georgina," she said presently, "I understand now, what is the matter. You're wondering the same thing about your father that these busybodies are. It's my fault though. I took it for granted that you understood about his long absence. I never dreamed that it was hurting you in any way."

Georgina hid her face in Barby's lap, her silence proof enough that her mother had guessed aright. For a moment or two Barby's hand strayed caressingly over the bowed head. Then she said:

"I wonder if you remember this old story I used to tell you, beginning, 'St. George of Merry England was the youngest and the bravest of the seven champions of Christendom. Clad in bright armor with his magic sword Ascalon by his side, he used to travel on his war horse in far countries in search of adventure.' Do you remember that?"

Georgina nodded yes without raising her head.

"Then you remember he came to a beach where the Princess Saba called to him to flee, because the Dragon, the most terrible monster ever seen on earth, was about to come up out of the sea and destroy the city. Every year it came up to do this, and only the sacrifice of a beautiful maiden could stop it from destroying the people.

"But undismayed, Saint George refused to flee. He stayed on and fought the dragon, and wounded it, and bound it with the maiden's sash and led it into the market place where it was finally killed. And the people were forever freed from the terrible monster because of his prowess. Do you remember all that?"

Again Georgina nodded. She knew the story well. Every Christmas as far back as she could remember she had eaten her bit of plum pudding from a certain rare old blue plate, on which was the picture of Saint George, the dragon and the Princess. "Nowadays," Barby went on, "because men do not ride around 'clad in bright armor,' doing knightly deeds, people do not recognize them as knights. But your father is doing something that is just as great and just as brave as any of the deeds of any knight who ever drew a sword. Over in foreign ports where he has been stationed, is a strange disease which seems to rise out of the marshes every year, just as the dragon did, and threaten the health and the lives of the people. It is especially bad on shipboard, and it is really harder to fight than a real dragon would be, because it is an invisible foe, a sickness that comes because of a tiny, unseen microbe.

"Your father has watched it, year after year, attacking not only the sailors of foreign navies but our own men, when they have to live in those ports, and he made up his mind to go on a quest for this invisible monster, and kill it if possible. It is such a very important quest that the Government was glad to grant him a year's leave of absence from the service.

"He was about to come home to see us first, when he met an old friend, a very wealthy Englishman, who has spent the greater part of his life collecting rare plants and studying their habits. He has written several valuable books on Botany, and the last ten years he has been especially interested in the plants of China. He was getting ready to go to the very places that your father was planning to visit, and he had with him an interpreter and a young American assistant. When he invited your father to join him it was an opportunity too great to be refused. This Mr. Bowles is familiar with the country and the people, even speaks the language himself a little. He had letters to many of the high officials, and could be of the greatest assistance to your father in many ways, even though he did not stay with the party. He could always be in communication with it.

"So, of course, he accepted the invitation. It is far better for the quest and far better for himself to be with such companions.

"I am not uneasy about him, knowing he has friends within call in case of sickness and accident, and he will probably be able to accomplish his purpose more quickly with the help they will be able to give. You know he has to go off into all sorts of dirty, uncomfortable places, risk his own health and safety, go among the sick and suffering where he can watch the progress of the disease under different conditions.

"The whole year may be spent in a vain search, with nothing to show for it at the end, and even if he is successful and finds the cause of this strange illness and a remedy, his only reward will be the satisfaction of knowing he has done something to relieve the suffering of his fellow- creatures. People can understand the kind of bravery that shows. If he were rescuing one person from a burning house or a sinking boat they would cry out, 'What a hero.' But they don't seem to appreciate this kind of rescue work. It will do a thousand times more good, because it will free the whole navy from the teeth of the dragon.

"If there were a war, people would not expect him to come home. We are giving him up to his country now, just as truly as if he were in the midst of battle. A soldier's wife and a soldier's daughter—it is the proof of our love and loyalty, Georgina, to bear his long absence cheerfully, no matter how hard that is to do; to be proud that he can serve his country if not with his sword, with the purpose and prowess of a Saint George."

Barby's eyes were wet but there was a starry light in them, as she lifted Georgina's head and kissed her. Two little arms were thrown impulsively around her neck.

"Oh, Barby! I'm so sorry that I didn't know all that before! I didn't understand, and I felt real ugly about it when I heard people whispering and saying things as if he didn't love us any more. And—when I said my prayers at bedtime—I didn't sing 'Eternal Father Strong to Save' a single night while you were gone."

Comforting arms held her close.

"Why didn't you write and tell mother about it?"

"I didn't want to make you feel bad. I was afraid from what Cousin Mehitable said you were going to die. I worried and worried over it. Oh, I had the miserablest time!"

Another kiss interrupted her. "But you'll never do that way again, Georgina. Promise me that no matter what happens you'll come straight to me and have it set right."

The promise was given, with what remorse and penitence no one could know but Georgina, recalling the letter she had written, beginning with a stern "Dear Sir." But to justify herself, she asked after the hair- brushing had begun again:

"But Barby, why has he stayed away from home four whole years? He wasn't hunting dragons before this, was he?"

"No, but I thought you understood that, too. He didn't come back here to the Cape because there were important things which kept him in Washington during his furloughs. Maybe you were too small to remember that the time you and I were spending the summer in Kentucky he had planned to join us there. But he wired that his best friend in the Navy, an old Admiral, was at the point of death, and didn't want him to leave him. The Admiral had befriended him in so many ways when he first went into the service that there was nothing else for your father to do but stay with him as long as he was needed. You were only six then, and I was afraid the long, hot trip might make you sick, so I left you with mamma while I went on for several weeks. Surely you remember something of that time."

"No, just being in Kentucky is all I remember, and your going away for a while."

"And the next time some business affairs of his own kept him in Washington, something very important. You were just getting over the measles and I didn't dare take you, so you stayed with Tippy. So you see it wasn't your father's fault that he didn't see you. He had expected you to be brought down to Washington."

Georgina pondered over the explanation a while, then presently said with a sigh, "Goodness me, how easy it is to look at things the wrong way."

Soon after her voice blended with Barby's in a return to the long neglected bedtime rite:

"Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee, For those in peril on the sea."

Afterward, her troubles all smoothed and explained away, she lay in the dark, comforted and at peace with the world. Once a little black doubt thrust its head up like a snake, to remind her of Melindy's utterance, "When a man wants to write, he's gwine to write, busy or no busy." But even that found an explanation in her thoughts.

Of course, Melindy meant just ordinary men, Not those who had great deeds to do in the world like her father. Probably Saint George himself hadn't written to his family often, if he had a family. He couldn't be expected to. He had "other fish to fry," and it was perfectly right and proper for him to put his mind on the frying of them to the neglect of everything else.

The four months' long silence was unexplained save for this comforting thought, but Georgina worried about it no longer. Up from below came the sound of keys touched softly as Barby sang an old lullaby. She sang it in a glad, trustful sort of way,

"He is far across the sea, But he's coming home to me, Baby mine!"

Lying there in the dark, Georgina composed another letter to send after her first one, and next morning this is what she wrote, sitting up in the willow tree with a magazine on her knees for a writing table:

"Dearest Father: I am sorry that I wrote that last letter, because everything is different from what I thought it was. I did not know until Barby came home and told me, that you are just as brave as St. George was, clad in bright armor, when he went to rescue the people from the dragon. I hope you get the monster that comes up out of the sea every year after the poor sailors. Barby says we are giving you to our country in this way, as much as if there was war, so now I'm prouder of having a St.-George-and-the-dragon-kind of a father than one like Peggy Burrell's, even if she does know him well enough to call him 'Dad-o'-my-heart.' Even if people don't understand, and say things about your never coming home to see us, we are going to 'still bear up and steer right onward,' because that's our line to live by. And we hope as hard as we can every day, that you'll get the mike-robe you are in kwest of. Your loving little daughter, Georgina Huntingdon."



Chapter XXVIII

The Doctor's Discovery



In due time the letter written in the willow tree reached the city of Hong-Kong, and was carried to the big English hotel, overlooking the loveliest of Chinese harbors. But it was not delivered to Doctor Huntingdon. It was piled on top of all the other mail which lay there, awaiting his return. Under it was Georgina's first letter to him and the one she had written to her mother about Dan Darcy and the rifle. And under that was the one which Barbara called the "rainbow letter," and then at least half a dozen from Barbara herself, with the beautiful colored photograph of the Towncrier and his lass. Also there were several bundles of official-looking documents and many American newspapers.

Nothing had been forwarded to him for two months, because he had left instructions to hold his mail until further notice. The first part of that time he was moving constantly from one out-of-the-way place to another where postal delivery was slow and uncertain. The last part of that time he was lying ill in the grip of the very disease which he had gone out to study and to conquer.

He was glad then to be traveling in the wake of the friendly old Englishman and his party. Through their interpreter, arrangements were made to have him carried to one of the tents of a primitive sort of a hospital, kept by some native missionaries. The Englishman's young assistant went with him. He was a quiet fellow whom Mr. Bowles had jokingly dubbed David the silent, because it was so hard to make him talk. But Doctor Huntingdon, a reserved, silent man himself, had been attracted to him by that very trait.

During the months they had been thrown together so much, Dave had taken great interest in the Doctor's reports of the experiments he was making in treating the disease. When the Doctor was told that Mr. Bowles had gone back to the coast, having found what he wanted and made his notes for his next book, and consequently Dave was free to stay and nurse him, he gave a sigh of relief.

Dave stopped his thanks almost gruffly.

"There's more than one reason for my staying," he said. "I've been sick among strangers in a strange country, myself, and I know how it feels. Besides, I'm interested in seeing if this new treatment of yours works out on a white man as well as it did on these natives. I'll be doing as much in the way of scientific research, keeping a chart on you, as if I were taking notes for Mr. Bowles."

That was a long speech for Dave, the longest that he made during the Doctor's illness. But in the days which followed, one might well have wondered if there was not a greater reason than those he offered for such devoted attendance. He was always within call, always so quick to notice a want that usually a wish was gratified before it could be expressed. His was a devotion too constant to be prompted merely by sympathy for a fellow-country-man or interest in medical experiments.

Once, when the Doctor was convalescing, he opened his eyes to find his silent attendant sitting beside him reading, and studied him for some time, unobserved.

"Dave," he said, after watching him a while—"it's the queerest thing— lately every time I look at you I'm reminded of home. You must resemble someone I used to know back there, but for the life of me I can't recall who."

Dave answered indifferently, without glancing up from the page.

"There's probably a thousand fellows that look like me. I'm medium height and about every third person you see back in the States has gray eyes like mine, and just the ordinary every-day sort of features that I have."

The Doctor made no answer. It never would have occurred to him to tell Dave in what way his face differed from the many others of his type. There was a certain kindliness of twinkle in the gray eyes at times, and always a straightforward honesty of gaze that made one instinctively trust him. There was strength of purpose in the resolute set of his mouth, and one could not imagine him being turned back on any road which he had made up his mind to travel to the end.

Several days after that when the Doctor was sitting up outside the tent, the resemblance to someone whom he could not recall, puzzled him again. Dave was whittling, his lips pursed up as he whistled softly in an absent-minded sort of way.

"Dave," exclaimed the Doctor, "there's something in the way you sit there, whittling and whistling that brings little old Provincetown right up before my eyes. I can see old Captain Ames sitting there on the wharf on a coil of rope, whittling just as you are doing, and joking with Sam and the crew as they pile into the boat to go out to the weirs. I can see the nets spread out to dry alongshore, and smell tar and codfish as plain as if it were here right under my nose. And down in Fishburn Court there's the little house that was always a second home to me, with Uncle Darcy pottering around in the yard, singing his old sailors' songs."

The Doctor closed his eyes and drew in a long, slow breath.

"Um! There's the most delicious smell coming out of that kitchen— blueberry pies that Aunt Elspeth's baking. What wouldn't I give this minute for one of those good, juicy blueberry pies of hers, smoking hot. I can smell it clear over here in China. There never was anything in the world that tasted half so good. I was always tagging around after Uncle Darcy, as I called him. He was the Towncrier, and one of those staunch, honest souls who make you believe in the goodness of God and man no matter what happens to shake the foundations of your faith."

The Doctor opened his eyes and looked up inquiringly, startled by the knocking over of the stool on which Dave had been sitting. He had risen abruptly and gone inside the tent.

"Go on," he called back. "I can hear you." He seemed to be looking for something, for he was striding up and down in its narrow space. The Doctor raised his voice a trifle.

"That's all I had to say. I didn't intend to bore you talking about people and places you never heard of. But it just came over me in a big wave—that feeling of homesickness that makes you feel you've got to get back or die. Did you ever have it?"

"Yes," came the answer in an indifferent tone. "Several times."

"Well, it's got me now, right by the throat."

Presently he called, "Dave, while you're in there I wish you'd look in my luggage and see what newspapers are folded up with it. I have a dim recollection that a Provincetown Advocate came about the time I was taken sick and I never opened it.

"Ah, that's it!" he exclaimed when Dave emerged presently, holding out the newspaper. "Look at the cut across the top of the first page. Old Provincetown itself. It's more for the name of the town printed across that picture of the harbor than for the news that I keep on taking the paper. Ordinarily, I never do more than glance at the news items, but there's time to-day to read even the advertisements. You've no idea how good those familiar old names look to me."

He read some of them aloud, smiling over the memories they awakened. But he read without an auditor, for Dave found he had business with one of the missionaries, and put off to attend to it. On his return he was greeted with the announcement:

"Dave, I want to get out of here. I'm sure there must be a big pile of mail waiting for me right now in Hong-Kong, and I'm willing to risk the trip. Let's start back to-morrow."

Several days later they were in Hong-Kong, enjoying the luxuries of civilization in the big hotel. Still weak from his recent illness and fatigued by the hardships of his journey, Doctor Huntingdon did not go down to lunch the day of their arrival. It was served in his room, and as he ate he stopped at intervals to take another dip into the pile of mail which had been brought up to him.

In his methodical way he opened the letters in the order of their arrival, beginning with the one whose postmark showed the earliest date. It took a long time to finish eating on account of these pauses. Hop Ching was bringing in his coffee when Dave came back, having had not only his lunch in the diningroom, but a stroll through the streets afterward. He found Doctor Huntingdon with a photograph propped up in front of him, studying it intently while Hop Ching served the coffee. The Doctor passed the photograph to Dave.

"Take it over to the window where you can get a good light on it," he commanded. "Isn't that a peach of a picture? That's my little daughter and the old friend I'm always quoting. The two seem to be as great chums as he and I used to be. I don't want to bore you, Dave, but I would like to read you this letter that she wrote to her mother, and her mother sent on to me. In the first place I'm proud of her writing such a letter. I had no idea she could express herself so well, and secondly the subject matter makes it an interesting document.

"On my little girl's birthday Uncle Darcy took her out in his boat, The Betsey. The name of that old boat certainly does sound good to me! He told her—but wait! I'd rather read it to you in her own words. It'll give you such a good idea of the old man. Perhaps I ought to explain that he Had a son who got into trouble some ten years ago, and left home. He was just a little chap when I saw him last, hardly out of dresses, the fall I left home for college.



"Uncle Darcy and Aunt Elspeth were fairly foolish about him. He had come into their lives late, you see, after their older children died. I don't believe it would make any difference to them what he'd do. They would welcome him back from the very gallows if he'd only come. His mother never has believed he did anything wrong, and the hope of the old man's life is that his 'Danny,' as he calls him, will make good in some way—do something to wipe out the stain on his name and come back to him."

The Doctor paused as if waiting for some encouragement to read.

"Go on," said Dave. "I'd like to hear it, best in the world."

He turned his chair so that he could look out of the window at the harbor. The Chinese sampans of every color were gliding across the water like a flock of gaily-hued swans. He seemed to be dividing his attention between those native boats and the letter when the Doctor first began to read. It was Georgina's rainbow letter, and the colors of the rainbow were repeated again and again by the reds and yellows and blues of that fleet of sampans.

But as the Doctor read on Dave listened more intently, so intently, in fact, that he withdrew his attention entirely from the window, and leaning forward, buried his face in his hands, his elbows resting on his knees. The Doctor found him in this attitude when he looked up at the end, expecting some sort of comment. He was used to Dave's silences, but he had thought this surely would call forth some remark. Then as he studied the bowed figure, it flashed into his mind that the letter must have touched some chord in the boy's own past. Maybe Dave had an old father somewhere, longing for his return, and the memory was breaking him all up.

Silently, the Doctor turned aside to the pile of letters still unread. Georgina's stern little note beginning "Dear Sir" was the next in order and was in such sharp contrast to the loving, intimate way she addressed her mother, that he felt the intended reproach of it, even while it amused and surprised him. But it hurt a little. It wasn't pleasant to have his only child regard him as a stranger. It was fortunate that the next letter was the one in which she hastened to call him "a Saint- George-and-the-dragon sort of father."

When he read Barbara's explanation of his long silence and Georgina's quick acceptance of it, he wanted to take them both in his arms and tell them how deeply he was touched by their love and loyalty; that he hadn't intended to be neglectful of them or so absorbed in his work that he put it first in his life. But it was hard for him to put such things into words, either written or spoken. He had left too much to be taken for granted he admitted remorsefully to himself.

For a long time he sat staring sternly into space. So people had been gossiping about him, had they? And Barbara and the baby had heard the whispers and been hurt by them——He'd go home and put a stop to it. He straightened himself up and turned to report his sudden decision to Dave. But the chair by the window was empty. The Doctor glanced over his shoulder. Dave had changed his seat and was sitting behind him. They were back to back, but a mirror hung in such a way the Doctor could see Dave's face.

With arms crossed on a little table in front of him, he was leaning forward for another look at the photograph which he had propped up against a vase. A hungry yearning was in his face as he bent towards it, gazing into it as if he could not look his fill. Suddenly his head went down on his crossed arms in such a hopeless fashion that in a flash Doctor Huntingdon divined the reason, and recognized the resemblance that had haunted him. Now he understood why the boy had stayed behind to nurse him. Now a dozen trifling incidents that had seemed of no importance to him at the time, confirmed his suspicion.

His first impulse was to Cry out "Dan!" but his life-long habit of repression checked him. He felt he had no right to intrude on the privacy which the boy guarded so jealously. But Uncle Darcy's son! Off here in a foreign land, bowed down with remorse and homesickness! How he must have been tortured with all that talk of the old town and its people!

A great wave of pity and yearning tenderness swept through the Doctor's heart as he sat twisted around in his chair, staring at that reflection in the mirror. He was uncertain what he ought to do. He longed to go to him with some word of comfort, but he shrank from the thought of saying anything which would seem an intrusion.

Finally he rose, and walking across the room, laid his hand on the bowed shoulder with a sympathetic pressure.

"Look here, my boy," he said, in his deep, quiet voice. "I'm not asking you what the trouble is, but whatever it is you'll let me help you, won't you? You've given me the right to ask that by all you've done for me. Anything I could do would be only too little for one who has stood by me the way you have. I want you to feel that I'm your friend in the deepest meaning of that word. You can count on me for anything." Then in a lighter tone as he gave the shoulder a half-playful slap he added, "I'm for you, son."

The younger man raised his head and straightened himself up in his chair.

"You wouldn't be!" he exclaimed, "if you knew who I am." Then he blurted out the confession: "I'm Dan Darcy. I can't let you go on believing in me when you talk like that."

"But I knew it when I said what I did," interrupted Doctor Huntingdon. "It flashed over me first when I saw you looking at your father's picture. No man could look at a stranger's face that way. Then I knew what the resemblance was that has puzzled me ever since I met you. The only wonder to me is that I did not see it long ago."

"You knew it," repeated Dan slowly, "and yet you told me to count you as a friend in the deepest meaning of that word. How could you mean it?"

The Doctor's answer came with deep impressiveness.

"Because, despite whatever slip you may have made as a boy of eighteen, you have grown into a man worthy of such a friendship. A surgeon in my position learns to read character, learns to know an honest man when he sees one. No matter what lies behind you that you regret, I have every confidence in you now, Dan. I am convinced you are worthy to be the son of even such a man as Daniel Darcy."

He held out his hand to have it taken in a long, silent grip that made it ache.

"Come on and go back home with me," urged the Doctor. "You've made good out here. Do the brave thing now and go back and live down the past. It'll make the old folks so happy it'll wipe out the heart-break of all those years that you've been away."

Dan's only response was another grasp of the Doctor's hand as strong and as painful as the first. Pulling himself up by it he stood an instant trying to say something, then, too overcome to utter a word, made a dash for the door.

Doctor Huntingdon was so stirred by the scene that he found it difficult to go back to his letters, but the very next one in order happened to be the one Georgina wrote to her mother just after Belle had given her consent to Barby's being told of Emmett's confession. He read the latter part of it, standing, for he had sprung to his feet with the surprise of its opening sentence. He did not even know that Emmett had been dead all these years, and Dan, who had had no word from home during all his absence, could not know it either. He was in a tremor of eagerness to hurry to him with the news, but he waited to scan the rest of the letter.

Then with it fluttering open in his hand he strode across the hall and burst into Dan's room without knocking.

"Pack up your junk, this minute, boy," he shouted. "We take the first boat out of here for home. Look at this!"

He thrust Georgina's letter before Dan's bewildered eyes.



Chapter XXIX

While they Waited



"There comes the boy from the telegraph office." Mrs. Triplett spoke with such a raven-like note of foreboding in her voice that Georgina, practising her daily scales, let her hands fall limply from the keys.

"The Tishbite!" she thought uneasily. What evil was it about to send into the house now, under cover of that yellow envelope? Would it take Barby away from her as it had done before?

Sitting motionless on the piano stool, she waited in dread while Mrs. Triplett hurried to the door before the boy could ring, signed for the message and silently bore it upstairs. The very fact that she went up with it herself, instead of calling to Barby that a message had come, gave Georgina the impression that it contained bad news.

"A cablegram for me?" she heard Barby ask. Then there was a moment's silence in which she knew the message was being opened and read. Then there was a murmur as if she were reading it aloud to Tippy and then—an excited whirlwind of a Barby flying down the stairs, her eyes like happy stars, her arms outstretched to gather Georgina into them, and her voice half laugh, half sob, singing:

"Oh, he's coming home to me Baby mine!"

Never before had Georgina seen her so radiant, so excited, so overflowingly happy that she gave vent to her feelings as a little schoolgirl might have done. Seizing Georgina in her arms she waltzed her around the room until she was dizzy. Coming to a pause at the piano stool she seated herself and played, "The Year of Jubilee Has Come," in deep, crashing chords and trickly little runs and trills, till the old tune was transformed into a paen of jubilation.

Then she took the message from her belt, where she had tucked it and re-read it to assure herself of its reality.

"Starting home immediately. Stay three months, dragon captured."

"That must mean that his quest has been fairly successful," she said. "If he's found the cause of the disease it'll be only a matter of time till he finds how to kill it."

Then she looked up, puzzled.

"How strange for him to call it the dragon. How could he know we'd understand, and that we've been calling it that?"

Georgina's time had come for confession.

"Oh, I wrote him a little note after you told me the story and told him I was proud of having a Saint-George-kind of a father, and that we hoped every day he'd get the microbe."

"You darling!" exclaimed Barbara, drawing her to her for another impulsive hug. She did not ask as Georgina was afraid she would:

"Why didn't you tell me you were writing to your father?" Barbara understood, without asking, remembering the head bowed in her lap after that confession of her encounter with the prying stranger in the bakery.

Suddenly Georgina asked:

"Barby, what is the 'Tishbite?'"

"The what?" echoed Barby, wrinkling her forehead in perplexity.

"The Tishbite. Don't you know it says in the Bible, Elijah and the Tishbite——"

"Oh, no, dear, you've turned it around, and put the and in the wrong place. It is 'And Elijah the Tishbite,' just as we'd say William the Norman or Manuel the Portuguese."

"Well, for pity sakes!" drawled Georgina in a long, slow breath of relief. "Is that all? I wish I'd known it long ago. It would have saved me a lot of scary feelings."

Then she told how she had made the wish on the star and tried to prove it as Belle had taught her, by opening the Bible at random.

"If you had read on," said Barby, "you'd have found what it meant your own self."

"But the book shut up before I had a chance," explained Georgina. "And I never could find the place again, although I've hunted and hunted. And I was sure it meant some sort of devil, and that it would come and punish me for using the Bible that way as if it were a hoodoo."

"Then why didn't you ask me?" insisted Barby. "There's another time you see, when a big worry and misunderstanding could have been cleared away with a word. To think of your living in dread all that time, when the Tishbite was only a good old prophet whose presence brought a blessing to the house which sheltered him."

That night when Georgina's curls were being brushed she said, "Barby, I know now who my Tishbite is; it's Captain Kidd. He's brought a blessing ever since he came to this town. If it hadn't been for his barking that day we were playing in the garage I wouldn't be here now to tell the tale. If it hadn't been for him I wouldn't have known Richard, and we'd never have started to playing pirate. And if we hadn't played pirate Richard wouldn't have asked to borrow the rifle, and if he hadn't asked we never would have found the note hidden in the stock, and if we hadn't found the note nobody would have known that Danny was innocent. Then if Captain Kidd hadn't found the pouch we wouldn't have seen the compass that led to finding the wild-cat woman who told us that Danny was alive and well."

"What a House-That-Jack-Built sort of tale that was!" exclaimed Barby, much amused. "We'll have to do something in Captain Kidd's honor. Give him a party perhaps, and light up the holiday tree."

The usual bedtime ceremonies were over, and Barby had turned out the light and reached the door when Georgina raised herself on her elbow to call:

"Barby, I've just thought of it. The wish I made on that star that night is beginning to come true. Nearly everybody I know is happy about something." Then she snuggled her head down on the pillow with a little wriggle of satisfaction. "Ugh! this is such a good world. I'm so glad I'm living in it. Aren't you?"

And Barby had to come all the way back in the dark to emphasize her heartfelt "yes, indeed," with a hug, and to seal the restless eyelids down with a kiss—the only way to make them stay shut.

Richard came back the next day. He brought a picture to Georgina from Mr. Locke. It was the copy of the illustration he had promised her, the fairy shallop with its sails set wide, coming across a sea of Dreams, and at the prow, white-handed Hope, the angel girt with golden wings, which swept back over the sides of the vessel.

"Think of having a painting by the famous Milford Norris Locke!" exclaimed Barby. She hung over it admiringly. "Most people would be happy to have just his autograph." She bent nearer to examine the name in the corner of the picture. "What's this underneath? Looks like number IV."

"Oh, that means he's number four in our Rainbow Club. Peggy Burrell is number five and the Captain is number six. That's all the members we have so far."

"Aren't you going to count me in?" asked Barby.

"Oh, you are counted in. You've belonged from the beginning. We made you an honary member or whatever it is they call it, people who deserve to belong because they're always doing nice things, but don't know it. There's you and Uncle Darcy and Captain Kidd, because he saved our lives and saved our families from having to have a double funeral."

Barby stooped to take the little terrier's head between her hands and pat-a-cake it back and forth with an affectionate caress.

"Captain Kidd," she said gaily, "you shall have a party this very night, and there shall be bones and cakes on the holiday tree, and you shall be the best man with a 'normous blue bow on your collar, and we'll all dance around in your honor this way."

Springing to her feet and holding the terrier's front paws, she waltzed him around and around on his hind legs, singing:

"All around the barberry bush, Barberry bush, barberry bush. All around the barberry bush So early in the morning."

Georgina, accustomed all her life to such frisky performances, took it as a matter of course that Barby should give vent to her feelings in the same way that she herself would have done, but Richard stood by, bewildered. It was a revelation to him that anybody's mother could be so charmingly and unreservedly gay. She seemed more like a big sister than any of the mothers of his acquaintance. He couldn't remember his own, and while Aunt Letty was always sweet and good to him he couldn't imagine her waltzing a dog around on its hind legs any more than he could imagine Mrs. Martha Washington doing it.

The holiday tree was another revelation to him, when he came back at dusk to find it lighted with the colored lanterns and blooming with flags and hung with surprises for Georgina and himself.

"You've never seen it lighted," Barby explained, "and Georgina's birthday had to be skipped because I wasn't here to celebrate, so we've rolled all the holidays into one, for a grand celebration in Captain Kidd's honor."

It was to shorten the time of waiting that Barbara threw herself into the children's games and pleasures so heartily. Every night she tore a leaf off the calendar and planned something to fill up the next day to the brim with work or play. They climbed to the top of the monument when she found that Richard had never made the ascent, and stood long, looking off to Plymouth, twenty miles away, and at the town spread out below them, seeming from their great height, a tiny toy village. They went to Truro to see the bayberry candle-dipping. They played Maud Muller, raking the yard, because the boy whom old Jeremy had installed in his place had hurt his foot. Old Jeremy, being well on toward ninety now, no longer attempted any work, though still hale and hearty. But the garden had been his especial domain too long for him to give it up entirely, and he spent hours in it daily, to the disgust of his easy-going successor.

There were picnics at Highland Light and the Race Point life-saving station. There were long walks out the state road, through the dunes and by the cranberry bogs. But everything which speeded Barbara's weeks of feverish waiting, hurrying her on nearer her heart's desire, brought Richard nearer ito the time of parting from the old seaport town and the best times he had ever known. He had kodak pictures of all their outings. Most of them were light-struck or out of focus or over-exposed, but he treasured them because he had taken them himself with his first little Brownie camera. There was nothing wrong or queer with the recollection of the scenes they brought to him. His memory photographed only perfect days, and he dreaded to have them end.

Before those weeks were over Richard began to feel that he belonged to Barby in a way, and she to him. There were many little scenes of which no snapshot could be taken, which left indelible impressions.

For instance, those evenings in the dim room lighted only by the moonlight streaming in through the open windows, when Barby sat at the piano with Georgina beside her, singing, while he looked out over the sea and felt the soul of him stir vaguely, as if he had wings somewhere, waiting to be unfurled.

The last Sunday of his vacation he went to church with Barbara and Georgina. It wasn't the Church of the Pilgrims, but another white-towered one near by. The president of the bank was one of the ushers. He called Richard by name when he shook hands with the three of them at the door. That in itself gave Richard a sense of importance and of being welcome. It was a plain old-fashioned church, its only decoration a big bowl of tiger-lilies on a table down in front of the pulpit. When he took his seat in one of the high front pews he felt that he had never been in such a quiet, peaceful place before.

They were very early. The windows were open, and now and then a breeze blowing in from the sea fluttered the leaves of a hymn-book lying open on the front seat. Each time they fluttered he heard another sound also, as faint and sweet as if it were the ringing of little crystal bells. Georgina, on the other side of Barby, heard it too, and they looked at each other questioningly. Then Richard discovered where the tinkle came from, and pointed upward to call her attention to it. There, from the center of the ceiling swung a great, old-fashioned chandelier, hung with a circle of pendant prisms, each one as large and shining as the one Uncle Darcy had given her.

Georgina knew better than to whisper in such a place, but she couldn't help leaning past Barby so that Richard could see her lips silently form the words, "Rainbow Club." She wondered if Mr. Gates had started it. There were enough prisms for nearly every member in the church to claim one.

Barby, reading the silent message of her lips and guessing that Georgina was wondering over the discovery, moved her own lips to form the words, "just honorary members."

Georgina nodded her satisfaction. It was good to know that there were so many of them in the world, all working for the same end, whether they realized it or not.

Just before the service began an old lady in the adjoining pew next to Richard, reached over the partition and offered him several cloves. He was too astonished to refuse them and showed them to Barby, not knowing what to do with them. She leaned down and whispered behind her fan:

"She eats them to keep her awake in church."

Richard had no intention of going to sleep, but he chewed one up, finding it so hot it almost strangled him. Every seat was filled in a short time, and presently a drowsiness crept into the heated air which began to weave some kind of a spell around him. His shoes were new and his collar chafed his neck. His eyelids grew heavier and heavier. He stared at the lilies till the whole front of the church seemed filled with them. He looked up at the chandelier and began to count the prisms, and watch for the times that the breeze swept across them and set them to tinkling.

Then, the next thing that he knew he was waking from a long doze on Barby's shoulder. She was fanning him with slow sweeps of her white- feathered fan which smelled deliciously of some faint per-fume, and the man from Boston was singing all alone, something about still waves and being brought into a haven.

A sense of Sabbath peace and stillness enfolded him, with the beauty of the music and the lilies, the tinkling prisms, the faint, warm perfume wafted across his face by Barby's fan. The memory of it all stayed with him as something very sacred and sweet, he could not tell why, unless it was that Barby's shoulder was such a dear place for a little motherless lad's head to lie.

Georgina, leaning against Barby on the other side, half asleep, sat up and straightened her hat when the anthem began. Being a Huntingdon she could not turn as some people did and stare up at the choir loft behind her when that wonderful voice sang alone. She looked up at the prisms instead, and as she looked it seemed to her that the voice was the voice of the white angel Hope, standing at the prow of a boat, its golden wings sweeping back, as storm-tossed but triumphant, it brought the vessel in at last to happy anchorage.

The words which the voice sang were the words on which the rainbow had rested, that day she read them to Aunt Elspeth: "So He bringeth them into their desired haven." They had seemed like music then, but now, rolling upward, as if Hope herself were singing them at the prow of Life's tossing shallop, they were more than music. They voiced the joy of great desire finding great fulfilment.



Chapter XXX

Nearing the End



"Old Mr. Potter has had a stroke."

Georgina called the news up to Richard as she paused at the foot of the Green Stairs on her way to the net-mender's house.

"Belle sent a note over a little while ago and I'm taking the answer back. Come and go with me."

Richard, who had been trundling Captain Kidd around on his forefeet in the role of wheelbarrow, dropped the dog's hind legs which he had been using as handles and came jumping down the steps, two at a time to do her bidding.

"Belle's gone over to take care of things," Georgina explained, with an important air as they walked along. "There's a man to help nurse him, but she'll stay on to the end." Her tone and words were Tippy's own as she made this announcement.

"End of what?" asked Richard. "And what's a stroke?"

Half an hour earlier Georgina could not have answered his question, but she explained now with the air of one who has had a lifetime of experience. It was Mrs. Triplett's fund she was drawing on, however, and old Jeremy's. Belle's note had started them to comparing reminiscences, and out of their conversation Georgina had gathered many gruesome facts.

"You may be going about as well and hearty as usual, and suddenly it'll strike you to earth like lightning, and it may leave you powerless to move for weeks and sometimes even years. You may know all that's going on around you but not be able to speak or make a sign. Mr. Potter isn't as bad as that, but he's speechless. With him the end may come any time, yet he may linger on for nobody knows how long."

Richard had often passed the net-mender's cottage in the machine, and stared in at the old man plying his twine-shuttle in front of the door. The fact that he was Emmett's father and ignorant of the secret which Richard shared, made an object of intense interest out of an otherwise unattractive and commonplace old man. Now that interest grew vast and overshadowing as the children approached the house.

Belle, stepping to the front door when she heard the gate click, motioned for them to go around to the back. As they passed an open side window, each looked in, involuntarily attracted by the sight of a bed drawn up close to it. Then they glanced at each other, startled and awed by what they saw, and bumped into each other in their haste to get by as quickly as possible.

On the bed lay a rigid form, stretched out under a white counterpane. All that showed of the face above the bushy whiskers was as waxen looking as if death had already touched it, but the sunken eyes half open, showed that they were still in the mysterious hold of what old Jeremy called a "living death." It was a sight which neither of them could put out of their minds for days afterward.

Belle met them at the back door, solemn, unsmiling, her hushed tones adding to the air of mystery which seemed to shroud the house. As she finished reading the note a neighbor came in the back way and Belle asked the children to wait a few minutes. They dropped down on the grass while Belle, leaning against the pump, answered Mrs. Brown's questions in low tones.

She had been up all night, she told Mrs. Brown. Yes, she was going to stay on till the call came, no matter whether it was a week or a year. Mrs. Brown spoke in a hoarse whisper which broke now and then, letting her natural voice through with startling effect.

"It's certainly noble of you," she declared. "There's not many who would put themselves out to do for an old person who hadn't any claim on them the way you are doing for him. There'll surely be stars in your crown."

Later, as the children trudged back home, sobered by all they had seen and heard, Georgina broke the silence.

"Well, I think we ought to put Belle's name on the very top line of our club book. She ought to be an honary member—the very honaryest one of all."

"Why?" asked Richard. "You heard all Mrs. Brown said. Seems to me what she's doing to give old Mr. Potter a good time is the very noblest——"

There was an amazed look on Richard's face as he interrupted with the exclamation:

"Gee-minee! You don't call what that old man's having a good time, do you?"

"Well, it's good to what it would be if Belle wasn't taking care of him. And if she does as Mrs. Brown says, 'carries some comfort into the valley of the shadow for him, making his last days bright,' isn't that the very biggest rainbow anybody could make?"

"Ye-es," admitted Richard in a doubtful tone. "Maybe it is if you put it that way."

They walked a few blocks more in silence, then he said:

"I think Dan ought to be an honary member."

It was Georgina's turn to ask why.

"Aw, you know why! Taking the blame on himself the way he did and everything."

"But he made just as bad times for Uncle Darcy and Aunt Elspeth as he made good times for Mr. Potter and Emmett. I don't think he has any right to belong at all."

They argued the question hotly for a few minutes, coming nearer to a quarrel than they had ever been before, and only dropping it as they crossed to a side street which led into the dunes.

"Let's turn here and go home this way," suggested Richard. "Let's go look at the place where we buried the pouch and see if the sand has shifted any."

Nothing was changed, however, except that the holes they had dug were filled to the level now, and the sand stretched an unbroken surface as before the day of their digging.

"Cousin James says that if ever the gold comes to the top we can have it, because he paid the woman. But if it ever does I won't be here to see it. I've got to go home in eight more days."

He stood kicking his toes into the sand as he added dolefully, "Here it is the end of the summer and we've only played at being pirates. We've never gone after the real stuff in dead earnest, one single time."

"I know," admitted Georgina. "First we had to wait so long for your portrait to be finished and then you went off on the yacht, and all in between times things have happened so fast there never was any time. But we found something just as good as pirate stuff—that note in the rifle was worth more to Uncle Darcy than a chest of gold."

"And Captain Kidd was as good as a real pirate," said Richard, brightening at the thought, "for he brought home a bag of real gold, and was the one who started us after the wild-cat woman. I guess Uncle Darcy would rather know what she told him than have a chest of ducats and pearls."

"We can go next summer," suggested Georgina.

"Maybe I won't be here next summer. Dad always wants to try new places on his vacation. He and Aunt Letty like to move. But I'd like to stay here always. I hate to go away until I find out the end of things. I wish I could stay until the letter is found and Dan comes home."

"You may be a grown-up man before either of those things happen," remarked Georgina sagely.

"Then I'll know I'll be here to see 'm," was the triumphant answer, "because when I'm a man I'm coming back here to live all the rest of my life. It's the nicest place there is."

"If anything happens sooner I'll write and tell you," promised Georgina.

Something happened the very next morning, however, and Georgina kept part of her promise though not in writing, when she came running up the Green Stairs, excited and eager. Her news was so tremendously important that the words tumbled over each other in her haste to tell it. She could hardly make herself understood. The gist of it was that a long night letter had just arrived from her father, saying that he had landed in San Francisco and was taking the first homeward bound train. He would stop in Washington for a couple of days to attend to some business, and then was coming home for a long visit. And—this was the sentence Georgina saved till last to electrify Richard with:

"Am bringing Dan with me."

"He didn't say where he found him or anything else about it," added Georgina, "only 'prepare his family for the surprise.' So Barby went straight down there to Fishburn Court and she's telling Aunt Elspeth and Uncle Darcy now, so they'll have time to get used to the news before he walks in on them."

They sat down on the top step with the dog between them.

"They must know it by this time," remarked Georgina. "Oh, don't you wish you could see what's happening, and how glad everybody is? Uncle Darcy will want to start right out with his bell and ring it till it cracks, telling the whole town."

"But he won't do it," said Richard. "He promised he wouldn't."

"Anyhow till Belle says he can," amended Georgina. "I'm sure she'll say so when 'the call' comes, but nobody knows when that will be. It may be soon and it may not be for years."

They sat there on the steps a long time, talking quietly, but with the holiday feeling that one has when waiting for a procession to pass by. The very air seemed full of that sense of expectancy, of waiting for something to happen.



Chapter XXXI

Comings and Goings



Out towards the cranberry bogs went the Towncrier. No halting step this time, no weary droop of shoulders. It would have taken a swift-footed boy to keep pace with him on this errand. He was carrying the news to Belle. What he expected her to say he did not stop to ask himself, nor did he notice in the tumultuous joy which kept his old heart pounding at unwonted speed, that she turned white with the suddenness of his telling, and then a wave of color surged over her face. Her only answer was to lead him into the room where the old net-mender lay helpless, turning appealing eyes to her as she entered, with the look in them that one sees in the eyes of a grateful dumb animal. His gaze did not reach as far as the Towncrier, who halted on the threshold until Belle joined him there. She led him outside.

"You see for yourself how it is," was all she said. "Do as you think best about it."

Out on the road again the Towncrier stood hesitating, uncertain which course to take. Twice he started in the direction of home, then retraced his steps again to stand considering. Finally he straightened up with a determined air and started briskly down the road which led to the center of the town. Straight to the bank he went, asking for Mr. Gates, and a moment later was admitted into the president's private office.

"And what can I do for you, Uncle Dan'l?" was the cordial greeting.

The old man dropped heavily into the chair set out for him. He was out of breath from his rapid going.

"You can do me one of the biggest favors I ever asked of anybody if you only will. Do you remember a sealed envelope I brought in here the first of the summer and asked you to keep for me till I called for it?"

"Yes, do you want it now?"

"I'm going to show you what's in it."

He had such an air of suppressed excitement as he said it and his breathing was so labored, that Mr. Gates wondered what could have happened to affect him so. When he came back from the vault he carried the envelope which had been left in his charge earlier in the summer. Uncle Darcy tore it open with fingers that trembled in their eagerness.

"What I'm about to show you is for your eyes alone," he said. He took out a crumpled sheet of paper which had once been torn in two and pasted together again in clumsy fashion. It was the paper which had been wadded up in the rifle, which Belle had seized with hysterical fury, torn in two and flung from her.

"There! Read that!" he commanded.

Mr. Gates knew everybody in town. He had been one of the leading citizens who had subscribed to the monument in Emmett Potter's honor. He could scarcely believe the evidence of his own eyes as he read the confession thrust into his hands, and he had never been more surprised at any tale ever told him than the one Uncle Darcy related now of the way it had been found, and his promise to Belle Triplett.

"I'm not going to make it public while old Potter hangs on," he said in conclusion. "I'll wait till he's past feeling the hurts of earth. But Mr. Gates, I've had word that my Danny's coming home. I can't let the boy come back to dark looks and cold shoulders turned on him everywhere. I thought if you'd just start the word around that he's all right—that somebody else confessed to what he's accused of—that you'd seen the proof with your own eyes and could vouch for his being all right—if you'd just give him a welcoming hand and show you believed in him it would make all the difference in the world in Danny's home-coming. You needn't mention any names," he pleaded. "I know it'll make a lot of talk and surmising, but that won't hurt anybody. If you could just do that——"

When the old man walked out of the president's office he carried his head as high as if he had been given a kingdom. He had been given what was worth more to him, the hearty handclasp of a man whose "word was as good as a bond," and the promise that Dan should be welcomed back to the town by great and small, as far as was in his power to make that welcome cordial and widespread.

* * * * *

Dan did not wait in Washington while Doctor Huntingdon made his report. He came on alone, and having missed the boat, took the railroad journey down the Cape. In the early September twilight he stepped off the car, feeling as if he were in a strange dream. But when he turned into one of the back streets leading to his home, it was all so familiar and unchanged that he had the stranger feeling of never having been away. It was the past ten years that seemed a dream.

He had not realized how he loved the old town or the depth of his longing for it, until he saw it now, restored to him. Even the familiar, savory smells floating out from various supper tables as he passed along, gave him keen enjoyment. Some of them had been unknown all the time of his wanderings in foreign lands. The voices, the type of features, the dress of the people he passed, the veriest trifles which he never noticed when he lived among them, thrilled him now with a sense of having come back to his own.

Half a dozen fishermen passed him, their boots clumping heavily. He recognized two of them if not as individuals, as members of families he had known, from their resemblance to the older ones. Then he turned his head aside as he reached the last man. He was not ready to be recognized himself, yet. He wanted to go home first, and this man at the end was Peter Winn. He had sailed in his boat many a time.

A cold fog was settling over the Court when he turned into it. As silently as the fog itself he stole through the sand and in at the gate. The front door was shut and the yellow blind pulled down over the window, but the lamp behind it sent out a glow, reaching dimly through the fog. He crept up close to it to listen for the sound of voices, and suddenly two blended shadows were thrown on the blind. The old man was helping his wife up from her rocking chair and supporting her with a careful arm as he guided her across to the table. His voice rang out cheerfully to the waiting listener.

"That's it, Mother! That's it! Just one more step now. Why, you're doing fine! I knew the word of Danny's coming home would put you on your feet again. The lad'll be here soon, thank God! Maybe before another nightfall."

A moment later and the lamp-light threw another shadow on the yellow blind, plain as a photograph. It was well that the fog drew a white veil between it and the street, for it was a picture of joy too sacred for curious eyes to see.

Danny had come home!

* * * * *

It was the tenth of September. The town looked strangely deserted with nearly all the summer people gone. The railroad wharf was the only place where there was the usual bustle and crowd, and that was because the Dorothy Bradford was gathering up its passengers for the last trip of the season.

Richard was to be one of them, and a most unwilling one. Not that he was sorry to be going back to school. He had missed Binney and the gang, and could hardly wait to begin swapping experiences with them. But he was leaving Captain Kidd behind. Dogs were not allowed in the apartment house to which his father and Aunt Letty intended moving the next week.

There had been a sorry morning in the garage when the news was broken to him. He crept up into the machine and lay down on the back seat, and cried and cried with his arms around Captain Kidd's neck. The faithful little tongue reached out now and then to lap away his master's tears, and once he lifted his paw and clawed at the little striped shirt waist as if trying to convey some mute comfort.

"You're just the same as folks!" sobbed Richard, hugging the shaggy head, laid lovingly on his breast. "And it's cruel of 'em to make me give you away." Several days had passed since that unhappy morning, however, and Richard did not feel quite so desolate over the separation now. For one thing it had not been necessary to give up all claim on Captain Kidd to insure him a good home. Georgina had gladly accepted the offer of half of him, and had coaxed even Tippy into according him a reluctant welcome.

The passengers already on deck watched with interest the group near the gang-plank. Richard was putting the clever little terrier through his whole list of tricks.

"It's the last time, old fellow," he said implor-ingly when the dog hesitated over one of them. "Go on and do it for me this once. Maybe I'll never see you again till I'm grown up and you're too old to remember me."

"That's what you said about Dan's coming home," remarked Georgina from under the shade of her pink parasol. That parasol and the pink dress and the rose-like glow on the happy little face was attracting even more admiration from the passengers than Captain Kidd's tricks. Barbara, standing beside her, cool and dainty in a white dress and pale green sweater and green parasol, made almost as much of a picture.

"You talked that way about never expecting to see Danny till you were grown," continued Georgina, "and it turned out that you not only saw him, but were with him long enough to hear some of his adventures. It would be the same way about your coming back here if you'd just keep hoping hard enough."

"Come Dicky," called Mr. Moreland from the upper deck. "They're about to take in the gang-plank. Don't get left."

Maybe it was just as well that there was no time for good-byes. Maybe it was more than the little fellow could have managed manfully. As it was his voice sounded suspiciously near breaking as he called back over his shoulder, almost gruffly:

"Well you—you be as good to my half of him as you are to yours."

A moment or two later, leaning over the railing of the upper deck he could see Captain Kidd struggling and whining to follow him. But Barby held tightly to the chain fastened to his collar, and Georgina, her precious pink parasol cast aside, knelt on the wharf beside the quivering, eager little body to clasp her arms about it and pour out a flood of comforting endearments.

Wider and wider grew the stretch of water between the boat and the wharf. Richard kept on waving until he could no longer distinguish the little group on the end of the pier. But he knew they would be there until the last curl of smoke from the steamer disappeared around Long Point.

"Here," said the friendly voice of a woman stand ing next to him. She had been one of the interested witnesses of the parting. She thrust an opera- glass into his hands. For one more long satisfying moment he had another glimpse of the little group, still faithfully waving, still watching. How very, very far away they were!

Suddenly the glass grew so blurry and queer it was no more good, and he handed it back to the woman. At that moment he would have given all the pirate gold that was ever on land or sea, were it his to give, to be back on that pier with the three of them, able to claim that old seaport town as his home for ever and always. And then the one thing that it had taught him came to his help. With his head up, he looked back to the distant shore where the Pilgrim monument reared itself like a watchful giant, and said hopefully, under his breath: "Well, some day!"

* * * * *

Georgina, waking earlier than usual that September morning, looked up and read the verse on the calendar opposite her bed, which she had jead every, morning since the month came in.

"Like ships my days sail swift to port, I know not if this be The one to bear a cargo rare Of happiness to me.

"But I do know this time," she thought exultingly, sitting up in bed to look out the window and see what kind of weather the dawn had brought. This was the day her father was coming home. He was coming from Boston on a battleship, and she and Barby were going out to meet him as soon as it was sighted in the harbor.

She had that quivery, excited feeling which sometimes seizes travelers as they near the journey's end, as if she herself were a little ship, putting into a long-wished-for port. Well, it would be like that in a way, she thought, to have her father's arms folded around her, to come at last into the strange, sweet intimacy she had longed for ever since she first saw Peggy Burrell and the Captain.

And it was reaching another long-desired port to have Barby's happiness so complete. As for Uncle Darcy he said himself that he couldn't be gladder walking the shining streets of heaven, than he was going along that old board-walk with Danny beside him, and everybody so friendly and so pleased to see him.

Georgina still called him Danny in her thoughts, but it had been somewhat a shock the first time she saw him, to find that he was a grown man with a grave, mature face, instead of the boy which Uncle Darcy's way of speaking of him had led her to expect. He had already been up to the house to tell them the many things they were eager to know about the months he had spent with Doctor Huntingdon and their long trip home together. And listening, Georgina realized how very deep was the respect and admiration of this younger man for her father, and his work, and, everything he said made her more eager to see and know him.

Uncle Darcy and Dan were with them when they put out in the motor boat to meet the battleship. It was almost sunset when they started, and the man at the wheel drove so fast they felt the keen whip of the wind as they cut through the waves. They were glad to button their coats, even up to their chins. Uncle Darcy and Dan talked all the way over, but Georgina sat with her hand tightly locked in her mother's, sharing her tense expectancy, never saying a word.

Then at last the little boat stopped alongside the big one. There were a few moments of delay before Georgina looked up and saw her father coming down to them. He was just as his photograph had pictured him, tall, erect, commanding, and strangely enough her first view of him was with his face turned to one side. Then it was hidden from her as he gathered Barby into his arms and held her close.

Georgina, watching that meeting with wistful, anxious eyes, felt her last little doubt of him vanish, and when he turned to her with his stern lips curved into the smile she had hoped for, and with out-stretched arms, she sprang into them and threw her arms around his neck with such a welcoming clasp that his eyes filled with tears.

Then, remembering certain little letters which he had re-read many times on his homeward voyage, he held her off to look into her eyes and whisper with a tender smile which made the teasing question a joy to her:

"Which is it now? 'Dear Sir' or 'Dad-o'-my heart?'"

The impetuous pressure of her soft little cheek against his face was answer eloquent enough. As they neared the shore a bell tolled out over the water. It was the bell of Saint Peter, patron saint of the fisher- folk and all those who dwell by the sea. Then Long Point lighthouse flashed a wel-come, and the red lamp of Wood End blinked in answer. On the other side Highland Light sent its great, unfailing glare out over the Atlantic, and the old Towncrier, looking up, saw the first stars shining overhead.

Alongshore the home lights began to burn. One shone out in Fishburn Court where Aunt Elspeth sat waiting. One threw its gleam over the edge of the cranberry bog from the window where Belle kept faithful vigil—where she would continue to keep it until "the call" came to release the watcher as well as the stricken old soul whose peace she guarded. And up in the big gray house by the break-water, where Tippy was keeping supper hot, a supper fit to set before a king, lights blazed from every window.

Pondering on what all these lights stood for, the old man moved away from the others, and took his place near the prow. His heart was too full just now to talk as they were doing. Presently he felt a touch on his arm. Georgina had laid her hand on it with the understanding touch of perfect comradeship. They were his own words she was repeating to him, but they bore the added weight of her own experience now.

"It pays to keep Hope at the prow, Uncle Darcy."

"Aye, lass," he answered tremulously, "it does."

"And we're coming into port with all flags flying!"

"That we are!"

She stood in silent gladness after that, the rest of the way, her curls flying back in the wind made by the swift motion of the boat, the white spray dashing up till she could taste the salt of it on her lips; a little figure of Hope herself, but of Hope riding triumphantly into the port of its fulfillment. It was for them all—those words of the old psalm on which the rainbow had rested, and which the angel voice had sung—"Into their desired haven."

THE END