“You seem pretty well dressed yourself,” remarked Atchison, peering up into the shadow.  “According to Mrs. Breckenridge, you go about dressed in monk’s cloth, and a shabby variety at that.  This doesn’t look like it.”

“He was wearing a dreadful, old shiny serge suit when I saw him a fortnight ago,” said Sue.  “And such a scarf-pin!  Don, are you wearing that same scarf-pin to-night?  Do show it to them.”

“Does choosing to live by himself make a man a fair target for all the quips and arrows of his friends?” Brown queried, at the same time withdrawing obediently the little silver pin from his cravat and giving it into Atchison’s outstretched hand.  “Be just to that pin, Webb.  It was given me by a special friend of mine.”

“How will you exchange?” Atchison inquired gravely, touching his own neckwear as he examined the pin.  A rare and costly example of the jeweller’s art reposed there, as might have been expected.

“I’ll not exchange, thank you.”

“Neither will I,” declared Atchison, leaning back with a laugh and passing the pin on down the line.

Hugh Breckenridge gave the obviously cheap and commonplace little article one careless glance, and handed it to Miss Forrest.  She examined it soberly, as if seeking to find its peculiar value in its owner’s eyes.  Then she looked at Brown.

“This has a story, I am sure, or you wouldn’t care so much for it,” she said.  “Are we worthy to hear it, Mr. Brown?”

His eyes met hers, though as he stood she could barely make out that fact.

“I should like you to hear it.”

“Come out of the darkness, Don, please!” begged his sister again.

The others echoed the wish, and Brown, yielding against his will—­somehow he had never wanted more to remain in the shadow—­took a chair at one end of the hearth, where he was in full view of them all.  “It was given me,” said Brown, speaking in a tone which instantly arrested even Hugh Breckenridge’s careless attention, though why it did so he could not have said, “by a man whose son was wearing it when he stood on a plank between two windows, ten stories up in the air, and passed fifteen girls over it to safety.  Then—­the plank burned through at one end.  He had known it would.”

There fell a hush upon the little group.  Mrs. Brainard put out her hand and touched Brown’s shoulder caressingly.

“No wonder you wouldn’t exchange it, Don,” she said, very gently.

“Was the father at your dinner, Don?” Doctor Brainard asked, after a minute.

“Yes, Doctor.”

“So you wore it to please him,” commented Sue.

“He wore it,” said Helena Forrest, “as a man might wear the Victoria Cross.”

“Ah, but I didn’t earn it,” denied Brown, without looking up.

“I’m not so sure of that,” Mrs. Brainard declared.  “You must have done something to make the father feel you worthy to wear a thing he valued so much.”