“What! What!” Hilda cried out. Then, “Oh, if I’d only known when you were here before—if you’d only told me then!” She clutched his hand and pulled him close after her. Both of them flushed, excited, they ran across the kitchen and came in behind Uncle Hank in the hall, moving toward the open door of the office just ahead. As Hilda, still drawing Pearse with her, followed, and pulled the door shut behind them, her call rang out strangely: “He’s here, Uncle Hank! He’s come!” CHAPTER XXXII AN ARRIVAL In the office Hank faced sharply around, and the tall men stood looking at each other; there was a moment of silence, in which the cooing of Sam Kee’s pigeons could be heard. Hilda was breathing short. “I—I thought maybe you’d know him,” she faltered at last, and Uncle Hank looked from one of them to the other in astonishment. “I reckon this is young Mr. Masters, ain’t it, Pettie?” “Henry Pearsall Moseley,” Pearse made the statement he had made to Hilda in other words as they crossed the cellar down there. “Masters is the name of my adopted parents. I just told Hilda. But she didn’t want to wait for details. She hurried me right up here to you. I—I had thought, myself, that it would be better to speak to you alone, at first. You would rather not have her hear—” He made a significant pause. Hank wasn’t listening; all his soul seemed to be in the gaze he set on this young man. When he spoke, it was to say, huskily, wonderingly, “Harry!” Then slowly, “It is you. Yes—seems I must have knowed you, even without the name. You’ve got the look of your mother, boy.” At that mention of his mother, Hilda saw an angry gleam come into Pearse’s eyes. “See here!” he burst out. “I’ve not told Hilda anything but my name—and that I’m your stepson. She’d never have known from me that you and my mother were separated, and that you turned your back on me, as though I’d been a stray dog. But if you want her to hear it—” “No! Oh, no!” Hilda broke in before Hank could find words. “That wasn’t the way of it, Pearse. Uncle Hank told me long ago about the little son he loved so, and— Oh, tell him, Uncle Hank! Tell him quick!” “Come over here. Set down. Both of you,” said Hank’s quiet voice. “We got to get the rights of this.” He took his place in the desk chair. As they were getting settled so that they faced him, Pearse said more mildly, “I’m sorry I spoke as I did just then. I don’t want to make Hilda feel bad. I’m willing to let bygones be bygones—if you will, sir.” “So, my boy’s come back to me, after a-many year—come back with a grudge against me, has he, Harry? Of all the things I thought to expect—that wasn’t, somehow, one. And what you said just now about me and your mother having parted? She never told you such a word. Where did you get it?” “From Uncle Jeff Aiken,” said Pearse bitterly. “The man you shoved me off on—that you had shoved her off on.”