I want to show 'em a hero!--What say? A genuine
hee-ro!"

It was half an hour after the Captain bursting upon his hearthstone like
a martial sky rocket, had exploded the last of his blue and green
candles. The three girls, sitting around the cold base burner, beside
and above which Mr. Brotherton stood in statuesque repose, heard the
Captain's tale and the protests of Mr. Brotherton much as Desdemona
heard of Othello's perils. And when the story was finished and retold
and refinished and the Captain was rising with what the girls called the
hash-look in his snappy little eyes, Martha saw Ruth swallow a vast yawn
and Martha turned to Emma an appreciative smile at Ruth's discomfiture.

But Emma's eyes were fixed upon Mr. Brotherton and her face turned
toward him with an aspect of tender adoration. Mr. Brotherton, who was
not without appreciation of his own heroic caste, saw the yawn and the
smile and then he saw the face of Emma Morton.

It came over him in a flash of surprise that Ruth and Martha were young
things, not of his world; and that Emma was of his world and very much
for him in his world. It got to him through the busy guard of his outer
consciousness with a great rush of tenderness that Emma really cared for
the dangers he had faced and was proud of the part he had played. And
Mr. Brotherton knew that, with Ruth and Martha, it was a tale that was
told.

As he saw her standing among her sisters, his heart hid from him the
little school teacher with crow's feet at her eyes, but revealed instead
the glowing heart of an exalted woman, who did not realize that she was
uncovering her love, a woman who in the story she had heard was living
for a moment in high romance. Her beloved, imperiled, was restored to
her; the lost was found and the journey which ends so happily in lovers'
meetings was closing.

His eyes filled and his voice needed a cough to prime it. The fire,
glowing in Emma Morton's eyes, steamed up George Brotherton's will--the
will which had sent him crashing forward in life from a train peddler to
a purveyor of literature and the arts in Harvey. Deeds followed impulses
with him swiftly, so in an instant the floor of the Morton cottage was
shaking under his tread and with rash indifference, high and heroic,
ignoring with equal disdain two tittering girls, an astonished little
old man and a cold base burner, the big man stalked across the room and
cried:

"Well, say--why, Emma--my dear!" He had her