“He would not let me go out either, but as I am tired to death of being cooped up in my room, I broke jail.  Can’t I see him?” he continued in a lower key.  He had his coat off and had hung it on the rack, she following him into the sitting-room, absorbing every inch of his strong, well-knit body from his short-cropped hair where the bandages had been wound, down to the sprained wrist which was still in splints.  She noted, too, with a little choke in her throat, the shadows under the cheek bones and the thinness of the nose.  She could see plainly how he had suffered.

“I am sorry you cannot see father.”  She was too moved to say more.”  He still has one degree of fever.”

“I have two degrees myself,” Jack laughed softly,—­“one records how anxious I was to get out of my cell and the other how eager I was to get here.  And now I suppose I can’t stay.”

“Oh, yes, you can stay if you will keep as still as a mouse so father can’t hear you,” she whispered, a note of joy woven in her tones.

She was leading him to the sofa as she spoke.  He placed a cushion for her, and took his place beside her, resting his injured hand, which was in a sling, on the arm.  He was still weak and shaking.

“Daddy is still in his room,” she rattled on nervously, “but he may be out and prowling about the upstairs hall any minute.  He has a heap of things to talk over with you—­he told me so last night—­ and if he knew you were here nothing would stop him.  Wait till I shut the door.  And now tell me about yourself,” she continued in a louder voice, regaining her seat.  “You have had a dreadful time, I hear—­it was the wrist, wasn’t it?” She felt she was beginning badly; although conscious of her nervous joy and her desire to conceal it, somehow it seemed hard for her to say the right thing.

“Oh, I reckon it was everything, Miss Ruth, but it’s all over now.”  He was not nervous.  He was in an ecstasy.  His eyes were drinking in the round of her throat and the waves of glorious hair that crowned her lovely head.  He noticed, too, some tiny threads that lay close to her ears:  he had been so hungry for a glimpse of them!

“Oh, I hope so, but you shouldn’t have come to the station that day,” she struggled on.  “We had Uncle Peter with us, and only a hand-bag, each of us,—­we came away so suddenly.”

“I didn’t want you to be frightened about your father.  I didn’t know that Uncle Peter was with you; in fact, I didn’t know much of anything until it was all over.  Bolton sent the telegram as soon as he got his breath.”

“That’s what frightened us.  Why didn’t you send it?” she was gaining control of herself now and something of her old poise had returned.

“I hadn’t got my breath,—­not all of it.  I remember his coming into my room where they were tying me up and bawling out something about how to reach you by wire, and he says now that I gave him Mr. Grayson’s address.  I cannot remember that part of it, except that I—­Well, never mind about that—­” he hesitated turning away his gaze—­the memory seemed to bring with it a certain pain.