much on it. Don't
sit up. David, I have heard something that makes me think he is alive.
Alive and well."

He made a desperate effort and controlled himself.

"Where is he?"

She sat down beside him and took his hand between hers.

"David," she said slowly, "God has been very good to us. I want to tell
you something, and I want you to prepare yourself. We have heard
from Dick. He is all right. He loves us, as he always did. And--he is
downstairs, David."

He lay very still and without speaking. She was frightened at first,
afraid to go on with her further news. But suddenly David sat up in bed
and in a full, firm voice began the Te Deum Laudamus. "We praise thee,
O God: we acknowledge thee to be the Lord. All the earth doth worship
thee, the Father everlasting."

He repeated it in its entirety. At the end, however, his voice broke.

"O Lord, in thee have I trusted--I doubted Him, Lucy," he said.

Dick, waiting at the foot of the stairs, heard that triumphant paean of
thanksgiving and praise and closed his eyes.

It was a few minutes later that Lucy came down the stairs again.

"You heard him?" she asked. "Oh, Dick, he had frightened me. It was more
than a question of himself and you. He was making it one of himself and
God."

She let him go up alone and waited below, straining her ears, but she
heard nothing beyond David's first hoarse cry, and after a little she
went into her sitting-room and shut the door.

Whatever lay underneath, there was no surface drama in the meeting. The
determination to ignore any tragedy in the situation was strong in
them both, and if David's eyes were blurred and his hands trembling, if
Dick's first words were rather choked, they hid their emotion carefully.

"Well, here I am, like a bad penny!" said Dick huskily from the doorway.

"And a long time you've been about it," grumbled David. "You young
rascal!"

He held out his hand, and Dick crushed it between both of his. He was
startled at the change in David. For a moment he could only stand there,
holding his hand, and trying to keep his apprehension out of his face.

"Sit down," David said awkwardly, and blew his nose with a terrific
blast. "I've been laid up for a while, but I'm all right now. I'll fool
them all yet," he boasted, out of his happiness and content. "Business
has been going to the dogs, Dick. Reynolds is a fool."

"Of course you'll fool them." There was still a band around Dick's
throat. It hurt him to