Lucy clung to Mrs. Lawton as she always had, with a wealth of the untutored daughterly affection that had missed its own outlet motherward, so Brooke left the two alone together for a few moments in the library while she went in to see how her father was faring. Tatters, as usual, was by his chair, not lying down but sitting erect and close. Adam Lawton was looking intently at a picture paper that Stead had brought which was propped on the rack before him. Seeing that her father had not yet noticed her, Brooke stood quite still, watching the pair. Once in a while the left hand would pat the dog’s head, that was constantly turned toward him, but Tatters’ attention seemed fixed upon the useless hand that rested, a dead weight, upon the knee. Nosing it gently, as a mother dog does her sleeping pups to make sure that they are alive, Tatters moved it perhaps an inch, his eyes open wide and ears moving questioningly. Meeting with no response, no sign of life, his dog mind evidently argued that the poor human paw was ill, and bringing the universal medicine of his race in play, he began to lick the hand with slow regular strokes of his strong, clean tongue, first going over the entire surface, then separating each finger with a clinging circular motion. Amazement seized Brooke as the thought came to her that, after all, had not nature antedated man in this, as in many things, and endowed the tongues of the dumb beasts with the vital principles of massage? Did the dog know, with that wisdom that only the confessed materialist is willing to call mere instinct, the impotence of that right hand; and why might there not be healing in his imparted vitality? Why might not the natural magnetism be as good as the electricity from the little machine that her mother gave her father each day? As she thought all this, she again heard that hoarse whisper. Straining every nerve, she listened; the sound came once more—a single word, “Tatters,” repeated again and again, and lingered over as if it were a magic clew to the loosening of a tangled skein of memory. Stepping quickly to his side, Brooke said, slowly and distinctly, “Father, Lucy Dean is here, with mother in the library. Lucy Dean—would you like to see her?” Ever since his return to Gilead, Brooke had made a point of calling Adam Lawton “father” very distinctly whenever she entered the room in his waking hours, to accustom him to the sound, also to speak of the ordinary unemotional affairs of every day as a matter of course, regardless of the fact that he did not heed. As she repeated the words “Lucy Dean” he shook his head slightly, but the word “mother” he repeated quite distinctly several times, smiling as he did so; and then Brooke knew for a certainty that, though motive power and sense of touch and taste and smell were coming back, memory had halted, and that it was the Tatters and mother of his youth that he associated with the words.