He bade them good-bye and strode on down the hill toward the cottage.  How strangely meetings changed the future!  Holt’s pride of possession in Bessy brought poignantly back to Lane his own hidden love for Mel.  And Bessy’s rapture of amaze at his improvement in health put Lane face to face with a possibility he had dreamed of but had never believed in—­that he might live.

That night was for Lane a sleepless one.  He seemed to have traveled in a dreamy circle, and was now returning to memories and pangs from which he had long been free.

Next morning, without any hint to Mel of his intentions, he left the cottage and made his way into town.  Almost he felt as he had upon his return from France.  He dropped in to see his mother and was happy to find her condition of mind and health improved.  She was overjoyed to see Lane.  Her surprise was pitiful.  She told him she was sure that he had recovered.

It was this matter of his physical condition that had brought Lane into Middleville.  For many months he had resigned himself to death.  And now he could not deny even his morbid fancy that he felt stronger than at any time since he left France.  He had worked hard to try to get well, but he had never, in his heart, believed that possible.

Lane called upon Doctor Bronson and asked to be thoroughly examined.  The doctor manifestly found the examination a task of mounting gratification.  At length he concluded.

“Daren, I told you over a year ago I didn’t know of anything that could save your life,” he said.  “I didn’t.  But something has saved your life.  You are thirty pounds heavier and gaining fast.  That hole in your back is healed.  Your lungs are nearly normal.  You have only to be careful of a very violent physical strain.  That weak place in your back seems gone....  You’re going to live, my boy....  There has been some magic at work.  I’m very happy about it.  How little doctors know!”

Dazed and stunned by this intelligence, Lane left the doctor’s residence and turned through town on his way homeward.  As he plodded on, he began to realize the marvelous truth.  What would Blair say?  He hurried to a telephone exchange to acquaint his friend with the strange thing that had happened.  But Blair had been taken to a sanitarium in the mountains.  Lane hurried out of town into the country, down the river road, to the cottage, there to burst in upon Mel.

“Daren!” she cried, in alarm.  “What’s happened?”

She rose unsteadily, her eyes dilating.

“Doctor Bronson said—­I was—­well,” panted Lane.

“Oh!...  Daren, is that it?” she replied, with a wonderful light coming to her face.  “I’ve known that for weeks.”

“After all—­I’m not going—­to die!...  My God!”

Lane rushed out and strode along the river, and followed the creek into the woods.  Once hidden in the leafy recesses he abandoned himself to a frenzy of rapture.  What he had given up had come back to him.  Life!  And he lay on his back with his senses magnified to an intense degree.