ed at once. Come and see. But you must not speak to him." She
led him cautiously down the long corridor between the beds. "See, he is
asleep." She bent over him, touching the bandage. Beneath it, the dark
skin was pallid, but the breath came easily from the sleeping lips.

She smiled at Achilles, guiding him from the room, ignoring the tears
that looked at her. "He is doing well, you see. It was pressure that
caused the fever, the bone was not injured. He will recover quickly.
Yes. We are glad!"

And Achilles, out under the clear sky, raised his face and caught the
sound of the city--its murmured, innumerable toil and the great clang
of wheels turning. And he drew a deep, quick breath. A city of power
and swift care for its own. The land of many hands reaching out to the
world. And Achilles's head lifted itself under the sky; and a mighty
force knit within him--a deep, quiet force out of the soul of the
past--pledging itself.

XV

THE POLICE MOVE

Life was busy for Achilles. There were visits to the hospital--where he
must not speak to his boy, but only look at him and catch little silent
smiles from the bandaged face--and visits to the great house on the
lake, where he came and went freely. The doors swung open of themselves,
it seemed, as Achilles mounted the steps between the lions. All the
pretty life and flutter of the place had changed. Detectives went in and
out; and instead of the Halcyon Club, the Chief of Police and assistants
held conferences in the big library. But there was no clue to the
child!... She had withdrawn, it seemed, into a clear sky. James had
been summoned to the library many times, and questioned sharply; but his
wooden countenance held no light and the tale did not change by a hair.
He had held the horses. Yes--there wa'n't nobody--but little Miss Harris
and him.... She was in the carriage--he held the horses. The horses?
They had frisked a bit, maybe, the way horses will--at one o' them
autos that squirted by, and he had quieted 'em down--but there wa'n't
nobody.... And he was the last link between little Betty Harris and the
world--all the bustling, wrestling, interested world of Chicago--that
shouted extras and stared at the house on the lake and peered in at
its life--at the rising and eating and sleeping that went on behind the
red-stone walls. The red-stone walls had thinned to a veil and the whole
world might look in--because a child had been snatched away; and the
heart of