amined it. He turned over the
leaves of a stray book, and read the name on the title-page. It all
seemed so strange--yet so familiar. Then he crept silently to the half-
open door of a little bedroom and peeped in, and his heart beat
strangely as he recognised a photograph on the dressing-table, and by
its side a letter written in his own handwriting. From this room he
turned to another still smaller and more roughly furnished. A walking-
stick stood in the corner that he knew well, and there was a cap on the
peg behind the door, the sight of which sent a thrill through him.

Yet he felt he dared touch nothing--that he scarcely dare let his foot
be heard as he paced across the room, or venture even to stir the little
fire that was dying out in the grate.

The slight flush which the excitement of his first arrival had called up
faded from his cheeks as the minutes wore on.

Presently his ears caught a light footfall on the pavement outside, and
his heart almost stood still as it halted and the bell rang below.

It was one of those occasions when a man may live a lifetime in a
minute. With a mighty rush his thoughts flew back to the last time he
had heard that step. What goodness, what hope, what love did it not
bring back to his life! He had taken it all for granted, and thought so
little of it; but now, after months of loveless, cheerless drudgery and
disappointment, that light step fell with a music which flooded his
whole soul.

He sat almost spell-bound as the street-door closed and the steps
ascended the stairs. The room seemed to swim round him, and to his
broken nerves it seemed for a moment as though he dreaded rather than
longed for what was coming. But as the door opened the spell broke and
all the mists vanished; he was his own self once more--nothing but the
long-lost boy springing to the arms of the long-lost mother.

"Mother!"

"My boy!"

That was all they said. And in those few words Reginald Cruden's life
entered on a new era.

When Horace half an hour later came flying on to the scene they still
sat there hand in hand, trying to realise it all, but not succeeding.
Horace, however, helped them back to speech, and far into the night they
talked. About ten o'clock Harker looked in for a moment, and after them
young Gedge, unable to wait till the morning. But they stayed only a
moment, and scarcely interrupted the little family reunion.

What those three talked about it would be hard