“If you are sure you must speak to her now,” she ventured to say. “But, oh, I am afraid----” At that he drew her closer, and for some ecstatic moment the hard thing that remained became as naught. “The day of fear and trembling is past, little one, and whatever befalls, whatever your mother may say, we shall still belong to each other. And I will wait and serve for you, my love, as Jacob served for Rachel, if need be. Now kiss me good-bye, dear, and go--before the love of you unmans me.” She lifted tear-brimmed eyes to his and said: “Oh, no; it must not be good-bye.” “Only for a little while, sweetheart. I’ll join you with the others when I have done what I must do.” “With the others? But how shall I know what she has said?” He smiled and once more kissed the parting of her hair. “You’ll know without the telling, my beloved. And if you are the first to welcome me, I’ll know you know. Now go, and let me have it over with.” She went obediently at that, and when she was gone, Brant began to walk the floor and to call up all his reserves of fortitude and courage, being well assured that he would presently need them. While he was yet planning the assault, and before the flanking regiments were properly wheeled into line, the door opened behind him and he turned to confront not Mrs. Langford, as he had anticipated, but her son. The “unlicked cub” came in, swaggering a little as was his wont; but when he had closed the door and so shut himself in with his redoubtable preserver, he had an attack of embarrassment which quickly put to flight the offhand greeting he had meant to offer. Whereupon, instead of carrying it off with the easy nonchalance of a man of the world, he stammered like any schoolboy and Brant had to come to the rescue. “How are you, Will? I am glad to see you,” he said, truthfully enough. The unchastised one felt that some acknowledgment of his immense obligation to Brant ought properly to precede any mere desultory talk, but to save his life he could not twist his tongue to anything like the adequate speech. So he spoke of Brant’s plans rather than of the obligation. “Heard you were off to the San Juan; Harry told us, you know. Jolly good layout, too, isn’t it? By gad, don’t you know I envy you?--no, that isn’t what I meant to say. Fact is, Mr. Brant, you see I’ve been hanging ’round the door so long waiting for Dorothy to come out that it’s got me rattled. What I wanted to ask was if you wouldn’t take me along. I reckon I don’t know enough about engineering to hurt me any--nothing much but what I learned at school--and folks say I’m too dead tough to breathe, but I’d like to learn, and--well, I don’t know, but I reckon I’ll never be any account till I get to work, and if anybody can brace me up, it’s you, and----” Brant was generous enough to break in and so supply the period the boy was so helplessly pursuing; and he did it the more readily since he felt the sudden and urgent prompting of a new and imperative duty.