“I pretty near run through everything I had trying to hunt you up. Looked like I just couldn’t turn back to Texas without my child. Ranches and cattle and roundups and such”—he gestured helplessly with his free hand—“they looked like nothing but a pack of foolishness to me then. Didn’t seem nothing in the world of any real value at the side of a little tow-headed feller that had run away—that was lost to me—out in the world somewheres. I sold my ranch. Most that it brought went into the search for you. It was when I give up and thought that you must be dead that I took this job as manager of the Sorrers. And after I’d been here three or four years the company sold to Pettie’s mother, and Pettie herself come out here to sorta fill the place that you’d left so turrible vacant.” “Father!” Hilda thought that word in Pearse’s voice must make up to Uncle Hank for a great deal. “Nobody on earth ever meant as much to me as you did. That’s why it hurt so when I had to believe you weren’t what I’d always thought you. A poor fool of a kid—are you going to forgive me?” “Ah, law, son! If I could be forgiven my own sins as easy as I can overlook your being a little too ready to be suspicious of me, and sorta holding onto a bad view of me whether the evidence seemed sufficient or not—if I could do that, I’d sure have a clean record.” In the deep silence that followed came again the velvety coo of Sam Kee’s pigeons. A belated bee from the hive out near the spring circled in through the window, hummed drowsily once around the room, and blundered out again. In the back hall the gong made its low-toned, persuasive announcement under the Chinaman’s hand. Steps came down the stairs, Miss Valeria’s little high-heeled slippers. A resounding bang from the living-room told that Burch had clapped-to the lid of his desk. In the crimson and gold glories that streamed from the west, last of the sunset fires, the three rose and stood together a moment lingeringly. Hank’s eyes wandered out over the prospect in front, basking in that radiance, then took on a far-away, dreamy look. “The evening’s a mighty sweet time, too,” he said low, as though speaking to himself. “We’ll go and tell the others, now, won’t we?” Hilda suggested with tremulous eagerness, as Pearse’s hand holding hers closed tighter over it. And when Hank turned and looked from her face to his boy’s, he saw on them the morning.