Still Freckles lay rigid and whiter than the coverlet.

“Would that boy be as old as me?” he asked.

“Yes,” said the Angel faintly.

“Angel,” said Freckles at last, catching her wrist, “are you trying to tell me that there is somebody hunting a boy that you’re thinking might be me?  Are you belavin’ you’ve found me relations?”

Then the Angel’s eyes came home.  The time had come.  She pinioned Freckles’ arms to his sides and bent above him.

“How strong are you, dear heart?” she breathed.  “How brave are you?  Can you bear it?  Dare I tell you that?”

“No!” gasped Freckles.  “Not if you’re sure!  I can’t bear it!  I’ll die if you do!”

The day had been one unremitting strain with the Angel.  Nerve tension was drawn to the finest thread.  It snapped suddenly.

“Die!” she flamed.  “Die, if I tell you that!  You said this morning that you would die if you didn’t know your name, and if your people were honorable.  Now I’ve gone and found you a name that stands for ages of honor, a mother who loved you enough to go into the fire and die for you, and the nicest kind of relatives, and you turn round and say you’ll die over that!  You just try dying and you’ll get A good slap!”

The Angel stood glaring at him.  One second Freckles lay paralyzed and dumb with astonishment.  The next the Irish in his soul arose above everything.  A laugh burst from him.  The terrified Angel caught him in her arms and tried to stifle the sound.  She implored and commanded.  When he was too worn to utter another sound, his eyes laughed silently.

After a long time, when he was quiet and rested, the Angel commenced talking to him gently, and this time her big eyes, humid with tenderness and mellow with happiness, seemed as if they could not leave his face.

“Dear Freckles,” she was saying, “across your knees there is the face of the mother who went into the fire for you, and I know the name—­old and full of honor—­to which you were born.  Dear heart, which will you have first?”

Freckles was very tired; the big drops of perspiration ran together on his temples; but the watching Angel caught the words his lips formed, “Me mother!”

She lifted the lovely pictured face and set it in the nook of his arm.  Freckles caught her hand and drew her beside him, and together they gazed at the picture while the tears slid over their cheeks.

“Me mother!  Oh, me mother!  Can you ever be forgiving me?  Oh, me beautiful little mother!” chanted Freckles over and over in exalted wonder, until he was so completely exhausted that his lips refused to form the question in his weary eyes.

“Wait!” cried the Angel with inborn refinement, for she could no more answer that question than he could ask.  “Wait, I will write it!”

She hurried to the table, caught up the nurse’s pencil, and on the back of a prescription tablet scrawled it:  “Terence Maxwell O’More, Dunderry House, County Clare, Ireland.”