It was the doctor who saw that emotion had reached the outer edge of safety for Mrs. Singleton Corey.  Over her head he scowled and made warning signs to Jack, who gave her a last exuberant squeeze and let the doctor lead her to a chair.

“I’ve got a wife out in the taxi, mother,” he announced next.  “She wouldn’t come in—­she’s afraid you won’t like her.  But you will, won’t you?  Can’t I tell her—­”

“Bring her right in here to me, Jack,” said Mrs. Singleton Corey, gasping a bit, but fighting still for composure to face this miracle of a pitying God.

Bit by bit the miracle resolved itself into a series of events which, though surprising enough, could not by any stretch of the credulity be called supernatural.

Mrs. Singleton Corey learned that, with a bullet lodged somewhere in the upper, northwest corner of Jack’s person, he had nevertheless managed to struggle down through the storm to Marston, with Marion helping him along and doing wonders to keep his nerve up.  They had taken the train without showing themselves at the depot, which was perfectly easy, Jack informed her, but cold as the dickens.

She managed to grasp the fact that Jack and Marion had been married in Sacramento, immediately after Jack had his shoulder dressed, and that they had come straight on to Los Angeles, meaning to find her first and face the music afterwards.  She was made to understand how terribly in earnest Jack had been, in going straight to the chief of police and letting the district attorney know who he was, and then telling the truth about the whole thing in court.  She could not quite see how that had settled the matter, until Jack explained that Fred Humphrey was a good scout, if ever there was one.  He had testified for the State, but for all that he had told it so that Jack’s story got over big with the jury and the judge and the whole cheese.

Fred Humphrey had remembered what Jack had shouted at the boys when they fired. “—­And mother, that was the luckiest call-down I ever handed the bunch.  It proved, don’t you see, that the hold-up was just a josh that turned out wrong.  And it proved the boys weren’t planning to shoot—­oh, it just showed the whole thing up in a different light, you know, so a blind man had to see it.  So they let me go—­”

“If you could have seen him, you wouldn’t have wondered, Mrs. Corey!” Marion had been dumb for an hour, but she could not resist painting Jack into the scene with the warm hues of romance.  “He went there when he ought to have gone to the hospital.  Why, he had the highest fever!—­and he was so thin and hollow-eyed he just looked simply pathetic!  Why, they wouldn’t have been human if they had sent him to jail!  And he told the whole thing, and how it just started in fooling; and why, it was the grandest, noblest thing a boy could do, when the others had been mean enough to lay all the blame on Jack.  And he had his shoulder all bandaged and his arm in a sling, and he looked so—­so brave, Mrs. Corey, that—­”