has been a hospital ever since the war began. Only
you're not with the other wounded. You are--well--a rather special
patient in the pavilion across the lake; and you're by way of being a
hero. The day I landed, the first paper I saw shrieked at me how you had
tracked the kaiser's star agent and outwitted him and handed him over to
justice."

"The deuce it did!" I exclaimed. "You must have been puffed up with
pride."

My guardian's jaw set itself rigidly. "I was too busy," was his grim
answer. "You see, the end of the statement said there was no hope that
you could survive. And when I got here I found you with fever, delirium,
one leg shot up, four bits of shell in your head, a fine case of brain
concussion. That was nearly three weeks ago, and it seems more like
three years!"

An idea, at this point, made me fix a searching gaze on him.

"By the way," I asked accusingly, "how did you happen to arrive so
opportunely on this side? It seemed as natural as possible to find
you settled here waiting for my eyes to open; but on second thoughts I
suppose you didn't fly?"

He looked extraordinarily embarrassed.

"Why," he growled at length, "I had business. I got a cablegram soon
after you left New York. The thing was confoundedly inconvenient, but I
had no choice about it."

"Dunny," I said weakly, but sternly, "you didn't bring me up to tell
whoppers, not bare-faced ones like that, anyhow, that wouldn't deceive
the veriest child. What earthly business could you have over here in
war-time? Own up, now, and take your medicine like a man."

His guilty air was sufficient answer.

"Well, Dev," he acknowledged, "it was your cable. That Gibraltar mess
was a nasty one, and I didn't like its looks. I'm getting old, and
you're all I've got; so I took a passport and caught the _Rochambeau_.
Not, of course, that I doubted your ability to take care of yourself, my
boy--"

"Didn't you? You might have," I admitted with some ruefulness, "if
you had known I was bucking both the Allied governments and the picked
talent of the Central powers. It was too much. I was riding for a fall,
and I got it. But I don't mind saying, Dunny, I'm infernally glad you
came."

He wiped his eyes.

"Well, you go to sleep now," he counseled gruffly. "You've got to get
well in a hurry; there's work for you to do! All sorts of things have
been happening since that _obus_ knocked you out. Just a week ago, for
instance, the President went before Cong