. He smiled
in quite his own whimsical way.

"Fooled even a noted person like you, did I, Winston?" he chuckled
feebly. "Just because I chose to go to sleep and didn't fidget round
much you thought I'd got my quietus, did you?"

"I think you're a pretty vigorous personality," responded the physician,
"and I'm quite willing to be fooled by you. Now I want you to take a
little nourishment and go to sleep again. If you think so much of this
young man of yours you can have him again in an hour, but I'm going to
send him away now. You see, he's been sitting right there all night."

Matthew Kendrick's eyes rested fondly again upon Richard's smiling face.
"You rascal!" he sighed. "You always did give me trouble about being up
o' nights!"

* * * * *

Richard Kendrick ran downstairs three steps at a bound. At the bottom he
met Judge Calvin Gray. He seized the hand of his grandfather's old-time
friend and wrung it. The expression of heavy sadness on the Judge's face
changed to one of bewilderment, and as he scanned the radiant
countenance of Matthew Kendrick's grandson he turned suddenly pale with
joy.

"You don't mean--"

Then he comprehended that Richard was finding it as hard to speak good
news as if it had been bad. But in an instant the young man was in
command of himself again.

"It wasn't apoplexy--it wasn't paralysis--it was only the shock of the
fall and the bruises. He's been talking to me; he's been twitting the
doctor on having been fooled. Oh, he's as alive as possible, and
I--Judge Gray, I never was so happy in my life!"

With congratulations in his heart for his old friend on the possession
of this young love which was as genuine as it was strong, the Judge
said: "Well, my dear fellow, let us thank God and breathe again. This
has been the darkest night I've spent in many a year--and this is the
brightest morning."

Everybody in the house was presently rejoicing in the news. But if
Richard expected Roberta to be as generous with him in his joy as she
had been in his grief he found himself disappointed. She did not fail
to express to him her sympathy with his relief, but she did it with
reinforcements of her family at hand, and with Ruth's arm about her
waist. She had trusted him when torn with anxiety; clearly she did not
trust him now in the reaction from that anxiety. He was in wild spirits,
no doubt of that; she could see it in his brilliant eyes.

It still lacked six