Alvin looked at them more blankly than ever. The affair of the communion service belonged to the dim past; since he had thought of the communion service he had been away to school, and had been educated and jilted, and cruelly maltreated by Bevy Schnepp, and had become engaged once more. It was a long time before Alvin could remember the very close relation he bore to the communion service. When he remembered, his heart sank. He recalled clearly his father's trying, desperate appeal on Christmas Day so long ago. Had they come to make him pay for his father's theft? "Your father insisted that my father had been in the church and had taken it," explained David. "I never believed it," cried Alvin at once. He was now terrified. Were they going to make him suffer for his father's madness. "I never believed it! Pop could never get me to believe it," he assured them earnestly. "But it is true, Alvin," insisted David. "Your father had nothing to do with it. He spoke the truth when he said that he knew nothing about it. A great wrong was done your father. I want to try to make part of it right with you and him." Alvin gaped at them. It was difficult to comprehend this amazing offer. "I have been to see your father, Alvin," David went on. "I hope you will forgive my father and me." David spoke steadily. The request was easy to make now; even greater humbling of himself would have been easy. Alvin responded in his own way. He remembered his long poverty, his lack of the things he wanted, the cruel price he had had to pay for his first beautiful red necktie. "My father spent a great deal of money for detectives," he said, ruefully. "That will be restored to him," said David. "Everything that I can do, I will do, Alvin." When their errand was made perfectly clear to Alvin, he was terrified again, now by his good fortune. He was to have money, money to do what he liked with, more money than he actually needed! The mortgage was to be destroyed--the mention of that instrument had alarmed him for the moment. Was he only to be relieved of a burden of whose existence he had been to this time unaware? But there was more to come! The sum his father had spent was to be guessed at liberally and was to be put on interest for his father's support, and Alvin himself was to have recompense. "Do you like teaching?" asked David. "Is there anything you would rather do?" Alvin clasped his hands as though to assure himself by physical sensation that he was awake and that the words he heard were real. He cherished no malice, hoarded no hatred--that much could be said for Alvin who failed in many other ways.