“I met Miss Carin down the road and I know what a hero you’ve been, lad,” she said under her breath. “It was beautiful—helping a man out of his ‘prison house of pain’ like that. Maybe you’ll have to pay by being laid up for a time, but I know you’re thinking to yourself that it’s worth it.” Keefe nodded. “If poor Panther gets well—” “Ah, I hope for that—I pray for that—the poor man!” Keefe said nothing more. He seemed very weary. Mary Cecily sat beside him, looking down at him, and he, half-closing his eyes, watched her changeful face. Azalea had sunk on the doorstep and sat there, her heart beating so she thought the others must hear it. All her thoughts and wishes were pouring out toward them, willing them to speak. Somewhere in the woodland a hermit thrush sent out its liquid, lovely note. It seemed above all sounds in the world, the one that suited the moment. “Why don’t they speak? Why don’t they speak?” Azalea asked the question over and over to herself. “They _must_ speak. They will be so happy when they know! Oh, how lonely they’ve been. Oh, poor dears! But _why_ don’t they speak?” It seemed as if the very air palpitated with her passionate desire. Then: “I wish you were my sister, Mrs. Rowantree,” said the boy’s wistful voice. “I’ve just been telling Miss Azalea how I once had a sister. Matey, she was called. Isn’t it a sweet little name? We were on a ship crossing the sea, my sister and my little mother and myself. It’s just a little bit of a boy I was—” Azalea heard a low cry of utter happiness, of amazed, yet undoubting faith. She slipped from the room and ran down the path. Her tears fell as she fled, but her heart was singing. The hermit thrush kept up its deep and tender song, but Azalea was certain that the words being spoken in that room were more beautiful and wonderful by far. CHAPTER XIV THE REBEL Azalea never forgot how quietly and sweetly that night came down. The mountain, so old—older than the peaks of the Rockies or the Sierras—lay beneath the stars with an air of placidity as comforting to the spirit as great music or great words. Within the room where Keefe rested, the shadows deepened till Azalea and the others could no longer see his long form on the sofa, nor the little dark head of Mary Cecily bent to touch his. “To think of finding some one on the earth who really, really belongs to you,” said Azalea. “Oh, Carin, how happy they are!” “Aren’t they!” sighed Carin sympathetically. “Oh, dear, Azalea, it makes me homesick for papa and mamma. Yet here we are, only half through the term of school we promised to teach.” “You can’t say that it’s been dull,” replied Azalea with a fluttering little laugh. “Just think of all that has happened these short three weeks.”