the kitchen
table. To adjust the pyjamas was, as Grant confessed, a bigger job than
harnessing a four-horse team, but at length it was completed.

"You must hear my prayer, Uncle Man-on-the-Hill," said the boy. "You
have to sit down in a chair."

Grant sat down and with a strange mixture of emotions drew the little
chap between his knees as he listened to the long-forgotten prattle.
He felt his fingers running through Wilson's hair as other fingers, now
long, long turned to dust, had once run through his....

At the third line the boy stopped. "You have to tell me now," he
prompted.

"But I can't, Willie; I have forgotten."

"Huh, you don't know much," the child commented, and glibly quoted the
remaining lines. "And God bless Daddy and Mamma and teddy-bear and Uncle
Man-on-the-Hill and the pig. Amen," he concluded, accompanying the last
word with a jump which landed him fairly in Grant's lap. His little
arms went up about his friend's neck, and his little soft cheek rested
against a tanned and weather-beaten one. Slowly Grant's arms closed
about the warm, lithe body and pressed it to his in a new passion,
strange and holy. Then he led him to the whim-room, turned down the
white sheets in which no form had ever lain and placed the boy between
them, snuggled his teddy down by his side and set his knife properly
in view upon the dresser. And then he leaned down again and kissed the
little face, and whispered, "Good night, little boy; God keep you safe
to-night, and always." And suddenly Grant realized that he had been
praying....

He withdrew softly, and only partly closed the door; then he chose a
seat where he could see the little figure lying peacefully on the white
bed. The last shafts of the setting sun were falling in amber wedges
across the room. He picked up a book, thinking to read, but he could not
keep his attention on the page; he found his mind wandering back into
the long-forgotten chambers of its beginning, conjuring up from the
faint recollections of infancy visions of the mother he had hardly
known.... After a while he tip-toed to the whim-room door and found that
Wilson, with his arms firmly clasped about his teddy-bear, was deep in
the sleep of childhood.

"The dear little chap," he murmured. "I must watch by him to-night. It
would be unspeakable if anything should happen him while he is under my
care."

He felt a sense of warmth, almost a smothering sensation, and raised his
hand to his fore