ere a nasty
bloodstain showing brightly against the yellow clay.

'Dick!' screamed Mrs. Haddon.

The next moment he lay in his mother's arms, clinging to her with
tenacious fingers, crying hysterically, utterly unlike the Dick she
thought she knew so well; and she kissed him, and wept over him, and
murmured to him as if he were really a baby again. She ascribed all to
terror aroused by the knowledge that the police were after him. He had
covered himself with slurry in strange hiding-places, and had had a fall
probably or a blow. He was fed, his clothes were put in water, and
finally he fell asleep in his own bed with his mother sitting by his
side, her hand clasped in his. If Dick had been told a week earlier that
he would ever go to sleep clinging to his mother's hand, he would have
scouted the idea with indignation and scorn; and he remembered the act
later with a blush as something shamefully effeminate or infantile,
betraying a weakness in his character hitherto quite unsuspected.

CHAPTER XVI.

DICK'S limbs were all stiff and sore when he awakened, but he was
wolfishly hungry, and that fact satisfied his mother that he had suffered
no particular physical injury. He was still much paler than usual and
suspiciously reserved, but he ate a good breakfast, and would have given
his mother even more gratifying evidence of the perfect state of his
health Had not Miss Chris interrupted his meal by a sudden and
disconcerting entrance. The young woman came into the room breathless,
eager-eyed, and white to the lips. She drew herself up by the door, and
made a poor pathetic effort to compose herself, to frame her plea in
conventional words; but she was too agitated to remember customary
greetings.

'Tell me! Tell me!' she said faintly.

Dick sat stock still, wondering what new thing had happened, asking
himself how much Chris knew of his secret; but sympathetic little Mrs.
Haddon started up in astonishment.

'Tell you what, my dear?' Then light came to her. 'About the accident?'

'Yes, oh, yes! Is it true? They say he is dying!'

'It isn't true. He is not very badly hurt. His mother went to the
hospital with him, an' has come back. It's concussion, the doctors say,
an' nothin' serious.'

Miss Chris was plucking nervously at the bosom of her dress with her left
hand, steadying herself against the table with her right; now that she
knew there was no occasion for her great alarm, woman-like she trembled
on the verge