“He has been very ill.  I began to think—­Dick, I’m afraid to tell him.  I’m afraid he’ll die of joy.”

He winced at that.  There could not be much joy in the farewell that was coming.  Winced, and almost staggered.  He had walked all the way from the city, and he had had no food that day.

“We’ll have to break it to him very gently,” he said.  “And he mustn’t see me like this.  If you can find some of my clothes and Reynolds’ razor, I’ll—­” He caught suddenly to the back of a chair and held on to it.  “I haven’t taken time to eat much to-day,” he said, smiling at her.  “I guess I need food, Aunt Lucy.”

For the first time then she saw his clothes, his shabbiness and his pallor, and perhaps she guessed the truth.  She got up, her face twitching, and pushed him into a chair.

“You sit here,” she said, “and leave the door closed.  The nurse is out for a walk, and she’ll be in soon.  I’ll bring some milk and cookies now, and start the fire.  I’ve got some chops in the house.”

When she came back almost immediately, with the familiar tray and the familiar food, he was sitting where she had left him.  He had spent the entire time, had she known it, in impressing on his mind the familiar details of the room, to carry away with him.

She stood beside him, a hand on his shoulder, to see that he drank the milk slowly.

“I’ve got the fire going,” she said.  “And I’ll run up now and get your clothes.  I—­had put them away.”  Her voice broke a little.  “You see, we—­ You can change in your laboratory.  Richard, can’t you?  If you go upstairs he’ll hear you.”

He reached up and caught her hand.  That touch, too, of the nearest to a mother’s hand that he had known, he meant to carry away with him.  He could not speak.

She bustled away, into her bright kitchen first, and then with happy stealth to the store-room.  Her very heart was singing within her.  She neither thought nor reasoned.  Dick was back, and all would be well.  If she had any subconscious anxieties they were quieted, also subconsciously, by confidence in the men who were fighting his battle for him, by Walter Wheeler and Bassett and Harrison Miller.  That Dick himself would present any difficulty lay beyond her worst fears.

She had been out of the room only twenty minutes when she returned to David and prepared to break her great news.  At first she thought he was asleep.  He was lying back with his eyes closed and his hands crossed on the prayer-book.  But he looked up at her, and was instantly roused to full attention by her face.

“You’ve had some news,” he said.

“Yes, David.  There’s a little news.  Don’t count too much on it.  Don’t sit up.  David, I have heard something that makes me think he is alive.  Alive and well.”

He made a desperate effort and controlled himself.

“Where is he?”

She sat down beside him and took his hand between hers.