No word reached him until late at night, when he arrived at the metropolitan hotel that he had made his headquarters.  When he registered, two telegrams were handed to him, and he tore them open eagerly.  The first was from Madame Francesca: 

“Slight change for the better.  New man gives hope.  Better return at once.”

The second one was wholly characteristic: 

“Willing to take chance.  Am camping on job.  Come home.”  It was signed:  “J.  E. Middlekauffer.”

When he got to his room, the Colonel sat down to think.  He knew no one of that name—­had never even heard it before.  Perhaps Francesca—­it would have been like her, to work with him and say nothing until she had something hopeful to say.

His heart warmed toward her, then he forgot her entirely in a sudden realisation of the vast meaning of the two bits of yellow paper.  Why, it was hope; it was a fighting chance presenting itself where hitherto had been only despair!  He could scarcely believe it.  He took the two telegrams closer to the light, and read the blessed words over and over again, then, trembling with weakness and something more, tottered back to his chair.

Until then, he had not known how weary he was, nor how the long weeks of anxiety and fruitless effort had racked him to the soul.  As one may bear a burden bravely, yet faint the moment it is lifted, his strength failed him in the very hour that he had no need of it.  He sat there for a long time before he was able to shut off the light and creep into bed, with his tear-wet cheek pillowed upon one telegram, and a wrinkled hand closely clasping the other, as though holding fast to the message meant the keeping of the hope it brought.

Utterly exhausted, he slept until noon.  When he woke, it was with the feeling that something vitally important had happened.  He could not remember what it was until he heard the rustling of paper and saw the two telegrams.  He read them once more, in the clear light of day, fearing to find the message but a fantasy of the night.  To his unbounded relief, it was still there—­no dream of water to the man dying of thirst, but a living reality that sunlight did not change.

“Thank God,” he cried aloud, sobbing for very joy, “Thank God!”

Meanwhile, the Resourceful One had shown the nurse how to cut a sleeve out of one of Allison’s old coats, and open the under-arm seam.  Having done this, she was requested to treat a negligee shirt in the same way.  Then the village barber was sent for, and instructed to do his utmost.

“Funny,” remarked Doctor Jack, pensively, “that nobody has thought of doing that before.  If I hadn’t come just as I did, you’d soon have looked like a chimpanzee, and, eventually, you’d have been beyond the reach of anything but a lawn-mower.  They didn’t even think to braid your hair and tie it with a blue ribbon.”

The nurse laughed; so did Allison, but the pensive expression of the young man’s face did not change.