“Days or hours—­I don’t know.”

“He mustn’t suffer!”

“I’ll see to that.”  Roger rose and walked the floor.

“It was the last month did it, of course—­”

“Yes—­”

“I blame myself for that.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Allan gently.  “You’ve done a good deal for Johnny Geer.”

“He has done a good deal for this family!  Can Deborah see him?”

“I wish she could.”

“Better stretch a point for her, hadn’t you?  She’s been a kind of a mother to John.”

“I know.  But she can’t leave her bed.”

“Then you won’t tell her?”

“I think she knows.  She talked to me about him last night.”

“That’s it, a mother!” Roger cried.  “She was watching!  We were blind!” He came back to his chair and dropped into it.

“Does John know this himself?” he asked.

“He suspects it, I think,” said Allan.

“Then go and tell him, will you, that he’s going to get well.  And after you’ve done it I’ll see him myself.  I’ve got something in mind I want to think out.”

After Allan had left the room, Roger sat thinking about John.  He thought of John’s birth and his drunken mother, the accident and his struggle for life, through babyhood and childhood, through ignorance and filth and pain, through din and clamor and hunger, fear; of the long fierce fight which John had made not to be “put away” in some big institution, of his battle to keep up his head, to be somebody, make a career for himself.  He thought of John’s becoming one of Deborah’s big family, only one of thousands, but it seemed now to Roger that John had stood out from them all, as the figure best embodying that great fierce hunger for a full life, and as the link connecting, the one who slowly year by year had emerged from her greater family and come into her small one.  And last of all he thought of John as his own companion, his only one, in the immense adventure on which he was so soon to embark.

A few moments later he stood by John’s bed.

“Pretty hard, Johnny?” he gently asked.

“Oh, not so bad as it might be, I guess—­”

“You’ll soon feel better, they tell me, boy.”  John shut his eyes.

“Yes,” he muttered.

“Can you stand my talking, just a minute?”

“Sure I can,” John whispered.  “I’m not suffering any now.  He’s given me something to put me to sleep.  What is it you want to talk about?  Business?”

“Not exactly, partner.  It’s about the family.  You’ve got so you’re almost one of us.  I guess you know us pretty well.”

“I guess I do.  It’s meant a lot to me, Mr. Gale—­”

“But I’ll tell you what you don’t know, John,” Roger went on slowly.  “I had a son in the family once, and he died when he was three months old.  That was a long time ago—­and I never had another, you see—­to take his place—­till you came along.”  There fell a breathless silence.  “And I’ve been thinking lately,” Roger added steadily.  “I haven’t long to live, you know.  And I’ve been wondering whether—­you’d like to come into the family—­take my name.  Do you understand?”