A certain harsh yet tender voice pronounced his name.  He felt his hands crushed in his father’s palms, found the old man’s arm about his shoulders, and saw the deep-set, steel-blue eyes he loved so well wet and shiny.  Then, for once and for all time, he realized that in the whole wide world there was but one man who really mattered, one man for whom he honestly cared.  A sudden sense of security swept over him, banishing all his fears.  The room with its smiling faces became blurred and distant; a thousand words of endearment sprang to his lips.  What he really said was: 

“Hello!” And even that he pronounced as shyly as a girl.

“My kid!” the old man said, shakingly.  “H-how have they treated you, Buster?” It was a nickname he had given his son when he was a sturdy, round-faced urchin of eight, and which he had laid away regretfully in lavender, so to speak, when the boy grew to manhood.

“You came, didn’t you?” Kirk said, in a voice not at all like his own.  “I knew you’d come.”

“Of course I came, the instant Clifford cabled me that these idiots had arrested you.  By God!  They’ll sweat for this.  How are you anyhow, Kirk?  Dammit, you need a shave!  Wouldn’t they give you a razor?  Hey!  Clifford, Colonel Jolson, come here!  These scoundrels wouldn’t give him a shave.”  Darwin K. Anthony’s eyes began to blaze at this indignity, and he rumbled on savagely:  “Oh, I’ll smash this dinky government—­try to convict my kid, eh?  I suppose you’re hungry, too; well, so’m I. We’ll be out of here in a minute, then you show me the best place in town and we’ll have a decent meal, just we two, the way we used to.  I’ll pay the bill.  God Almighty!  I’ve missed you, Buster.”

“Wait, dad.”  Kirk was smiling, but his heart ached at his father’s emotion.  “I’m a jail-bird, you know.  They think I—­killed a fellow.  But I don’t care much what they think now.”

“That’s all over,” Clifford broke in.  “We’ve squared that, and you’ll be discharged in ten minutes.”

“Honest?”

“Certainly,” said the old gentleman.  “Cortlandt shot himself.  Anybody but a blithering Spanish ass would have known it at the start.  We have a letter he wrote to his wife an hour before he did it.  She just found it and turned it over.  She left here a moment ago, by-the-way, all broken up.  She’s a great woman, Kirk.  That’s not all, either.  Clifford followed you that night, and knows you didn’t go near Cortlandt.  Oh, you should have seen ’em jump when we flashed it on ’em all at once and they learned who I was!”

“But those men who swore they saw me?”

“Bah!  We’ve got that little Dago with the mustache, and both his witnesses.  If they don’t send him up, I’ll run in a shipload of my brakemen, and we’ll push this Isthmus overboard and him with it.”

“I knew you could fix things.”

“Fix ’em!  Fix ’em!  That’s easy!  Say, how have you been getting along, anyhow?”