The very last of Bernal’s utterances that could have been reprobated in a well man was his telling Clytie in the old gentleman’s presence that, whereas in his boyhood he had pictured the hand of God as a big black hand reaching down to “remove” people—­“the way you weed an onion bed”—­he now conceived it to be like her own—­“the most beautiful fat, red hand in the world, always patting you or tucking you in, or reaching you something good or pointing to a jar of cookies.”  It was so dangerously close to irreverence that it made Clytemnestra look stiff and solemn as she arranged matters on the luncheon tray; yet it was so inoffensive, considering the past, that it made Grandfather Delcher quite hopeful.

Thereafter, instead of babbling blasphemies, the convalescent became silent for the most part, yet cheerful and beautifully rational when he did speak, so that fear came gradually to leave the old man’s heart for longer and longer intervals.  Indeed, one day when Bernal had long lain silent, he swept lingering doubts from the old man’s mind by saying, with a curious little air of embarrassment, yet with a return of that old-time playful assumption of equality between them—­“I’m afraid, old man, I may have been a little queer in my talk—­back there.”

The old man’s heart leaped with hope at this, though the acknowledgment struck him as being inadequate to the circumstance it referred to.

“You were flighty, boy, now and then,” he replied, in quite the same glossing strain of inadequacy.

“I can’t tell you how queerly things came back to me—­some bits of consciousness and memory came early and some came late—­and they’re still struggling along in that disorderly procession.  Even yet I’ve not been able to take stock.  Old man, I must have been an awful bore.”

“Oh, no—­not that, boy!” Then, in glad relief, he fell upon his knees beside the couch, praying, in discreetly veiled language, that the pure heart of a babbler might not be held guilty for the utterances of an irresponsible head.

Yet, after many days of sane quiet and ever-renewing strength—­days of long walks in the summer woods or long readings in the hammock when the shadows lay east of the big house, there came to be observed in the young man a certain moody reticence.  And when the time for his return to college was near, he came again to his disquieted grandfather one day, saying: 

“I think there are some matters I should speak to you about, sir.”  Had he used the term “old man,” instead of “sir,” there might still have been no cause for alarm.  As it was, the grandfather regarded him in a sudden, heart-hurried fear.

“Are the matters, boy, those—­those about which you may have spoken during your sickness?”

“I believe so, sir.”

The old man winced again under the “sir,” when his heart longed for the other term of playful familiarity.  But he quickly assumed a lightness of manner to hide the eagerness of his heart’s appeal: