it was the handwriting which he had come to know
well, had known well, seeing it once--her handwriting. In a moment the
jagged-edged envelope, torn in a desperate hurry to get what it held,
lay one side, and he was reading.

"Dear Mr. Fairfax": the letter ran; "For two weeks I have been very
unjust to you and I want to beg your pardon. Billy was here three days
ago, and what I didn't know and what he didn't know we patched together,
and the consequence is I want to apologize and to make up to you, if I
can, for being so disagreeable. Billy's recollections of that night were
disjointed, but he remembered a lot in spots, and I know now just what a
friend you were to him and how you saved him. I think he was horrid, but
I think you were fine--simply fine. I can't half say it in writing so
will you please come out for over Sunday--mother says--and I'll try to
show you how splendid I think you were. Will you? Yours sincerely"--and
her name.

Would he? Such a radiant smile shone through the little bare room that
the May breeze, catching its light at the window, clapped gay applause
against the flapping curtain. This was as it should be.

But the breeze and the postman were not to be the only messengers of
happiness. Steps sounded down the long, empty hall, stopped at his
door, and Rex, a new joy of living pulsing through him, sprang again,
almost before the knock sounded, to meet gladly what might be coming.
His face looked out of the wide-open doorway with so bright a welcome to
the world, that the two men who stood across the threshold smiled an
involuntary answer.

"Carty! I'm awfully glad"--and Rex stopped to put his hand out
graciously, deferentially, to the gray-haired and distinguished man who
stood with Carter Reed.

"Judge Rush, this is my cousin, Mr. Fairfax," Reed presented him, and in
a moment Rex's friend, the breeze, was helping hospitality on with gay
little refreshing dashes at a warm, silvered head, as Judge Rush sat in
the biggest chair at the big open window. He beamed upon the young man
with interested, friendly eyes.

"That's all very well about the quadrangle, Mr. Reed. It certainly is
beautiful and like the English Universities," he broke into a sentence
genially. "But I wish to talk to Mr. Fairfax. I've come to bring you
the first news, Mr. Fairfax, of what you will hear officially within a
day or two--that the vestry of St. Eric's hope you will consider a call
to be our assistant rector." Rex's