g been free.

Next morning, without any hint to Mel of his intentions, he left the
cottage and made his way into town. Almost he felt as he had upon his
return from France. He dropped in to see his mother and was happy to
find her condition of mind and health improved. She was overjoyed to
see Lane. Her surprise was pitiful. She told him she was sure that he
had recovered.

It was this matter of his physical condition that had brought Lane
into Middleville. For many months he had resigned himself to death.
And now he could not deny even his morbid fancy that he felt stronger
than at any time since he left France. He had worked hard to try to
get well, but he had never, in his heart, believed that possible.

Lane called upon Doctor Bronson and asked to be thoroughly examined.
The doctor manifestly found the examination a task of mounting
gratification. At length he concluded.

"Daren, I told you over a year ago I didn't know of anything that
could save your life," he said. "I didn't. But something _has_ saved
your life. You are thirty pounds heavier and gaining fast. That hole
in your back is healed. Your lungs are nearly normal. You have only to
be careful of a very violent physical strain. That weak place in your
back seems gone.... You're going to _live_, my boy.... There has been
some magic at work. I'm very happy about it. How little doctors know!"

Dazed and stunned by this intelligence, Lane left the doctor's
residence and turned through town on his way homeward. As he plodded
on, he began to realize the marvelous truth. What would Blair say? He
hurried to a telephone exchange to acquaint his friend with the
strange thing that had happened. But Blair had been taken to a
sanitarium in the mountains. Lane hurried out of town into the
country, down the river road, to the cottage, there to burst in upon
Mel.

"Daren!" she cried, in alarm. "What's happened?"

She rose unsteadily, her eyes dilating.

"Doctor Bronson said--I was--well," panted Lane.

"Oh!... Daren, is _that_ it?" she replied, with a wonderful light
coming to her face. "I've known that for weeks."

"After all--I'm not going--to die!... My God!"

Lane rushed out and strode along the river, and followed the creek
into the woods. Once hidden in the leafy recesses he abandoned himself
to a frenzy of rapture. What he had given up had come back to him.
Life! And he lay on his back with his senses magnified to an intense
degree.

The day was late