“So you are going, Jack!  And—­and, Jack, you know?” asked Peter significantly.

“Yes, Peter.  And I see that you know.”

“I do, but my word is given not to tell.”

Through that night’s march Jack had guessed enough.  He had guessed his fill of chill misery, which now took the place of the hunger of inquiry.  The full truth was speeding out to the desert.  It was with John Prather.

“Then I will not press you, Peter,” he said.  “But, Peter, just one question, if you care to answer; was it—­was it this thing that drove my mother into exile?”

“Yes, Jack.”

Then a moment’s silence, with Peter’s eyes full of sympathy and Jack’s dull with pain.

“And, Jack,” Peter went on, “well, I’ve been so long at it that suddenly, now you’re going, I feel choked up, as if I were about to overflow with anarchy.  Jack, I’m going to give notice that I will retire as soon as there is somebody to take my place.  I want to rest and not have to keep trying to remember if I have forgotten anything.  I’ve saved up a little money and whatever happens out there, why, there’ll be some place I can buy where I can grow roses and salads, as you say, if nothing more profitable, won’t there?”

“Yes, Peter.  I know other fertile valleys besides that of Little Rivers, though none that is its equal.  I shall have a garden in one of them and you shall have a garden next to mine.”

“Then I feel fixed comfortable for life!” said Peter, with a perfectly wonderful smile enlivening the wrinkles of his old face, which made Jack think once more that life was worth living.

Later in the morning, after he had bought tickets for Little Rivers, Jack returned to the house.  When he stood devoutly before the portrait, whose “I give!  I give!” he now understood in new depths, he thought: 

“I know that you would not want to remain here another hour.  You would want to go with me.”

And before the portrait on the other side of the mantel he thought, challengingly and affectionately: 

“And you?  You were an old devil, no doubt, but you would not lie!  No, you would not lie to the Admiralty or to Elizabeth even to save your head!  Yes, you would want to go with me, too!”

Tenderly he assisted the butler to pack the portraits, which were put in a cab.  When Jack departed in their company, this note lay on the desk in the library, awaiting John Wingfield, Sr.’s return that evening: 

“Father: 

“The wire to Jim Galway which I enclose tells its own story.  It was written after our talk.  When I was going out to send it I saw John Prather and you in the hall.  You said that you knew nothing of him.  I overheard what passed between you and him.  So I am going back to Little Rivers.  The only hope for me now is out there.

“I am taking the portrait of my mother, because it is mine.  I am taking the portrait of the ancestor, because I cannot help it any more than he could help taking a Spanish galleon.  That is all I ask or ever could accept in the way of an inheritance.