Hemingway's
white face (crowned now with snowy hair) lifted up toward heaven. After
that I never could remember, save that there was a hush, then a clamor,
that was followed pretty soon by embraces from the older men and women,
pounding thumps from the younger men and handshaking with the girls. And
all the while, with a proprietary sense I had found myself near Marjie,
whom I kept close beside me now, her brown head just above my shoulder.

More than once in the decades since then it has been my fortune to
return to Springvale and be met at the railway station and escorted home
by the town band. Sometimes for political service, sometimes for civic
effort, and once because by physical strength and great daring and quick
cool courage I saved three human lives in a terrible wreck; but never
any ovation was like that prayer meeting in the Presbyterian Church
nearly forty years ago.

The days that followed my home-coming were busy ones, for my place in
the office had been vacant. Clayton Anderson had devoted himself to the
Whately affairs, although nobody but those in the secret knew when
Judson gave up proprietorship and went on a clerk's pay again where he
belonged. Springvale was kind to Judson, as it has always been to the
man who tries honestly to make good in this life's struggle. It is in
the Kansas air, this broader charity, this estimation of character,
redeemed or redeemable.

My father did not tell me of his part in the Whately business affairs at
once, and I did not understand when, one evening, some time later, Aunt
Candace said at the supper table:

"Dollie Gentry tells me Dr. John (so we called John Anderson now),
reports a twelve-pound boy over at Judsons'. They are going to christen
him 'John Baronet Judson.' Aren't you proud of the name, John?"

"I am of the Judson part," my father answered, with that compression of
the lips that sometimes kept back a smile, and sometimes marked a
growing sternness.

I met O'mie at Topeka and brought him to Springvale. It was not until in
May of the next year that he went away from us and came not back any
more, save in loving remembrance.

In August Tillhurst went East. Somehow I was not at all surprised when
the Rockport, Massachusetts, weekly newspaper, that had come to our
house every Tuesday while we had lived on Cliff Street, contained the
notice of the marriage of Richard Tillhurst and Rachel Agnes Melrose.
The happy couple, the paper said, would reside in R