The man's shoulders shivered under their cape, and a wan smile curled in his beard. "You keep your house at a very low temperature," he said with grave pleasantry. He did not seem to mind Aunt Susan's hostile demeanor at all. "I was badly wounded last September," he went on, quite as if that was what she had asked him, "and lay at the point of death for weeks. Then they sent me North, and I have been in the hospital at Albany ever since. One of the nurses there, struck by my name, asked me if I had any relatives in her village—that is, Juno Mills. In that way I learned where you were living. I suppose I ought not to have come—against doctor's orders—the journey has been too much—I have suffered a good deal these last two hours." I felt my Aunt's hand shake a little on my shoulder. Her voice, though, was as implacable as ever. "There is a much better reason than that why you should not have come," she said, bitterly. The stranger was talking to her, but looking at me. He took a step toward me now, with a softened sparkle in his eyes and an outstretched hand. "This—this then is the boy, is it?" he asked. With a gesture of amazing swiftness Aunt Susan threw her arm about me, and drew me close to her side, lamp and all. With her other hand she lifted and almost brandished the cleaver. "No, you don't!" she cried. "You don't touch him! He's mine! I've worked for him day and night ever since I took him from his dying mother's breast. I closed her eyes. I forgave her. Blood is thicker'n water after all. She was my sister. Yes, I forgave poor Emmeline, and I kissed her before she died. She gave the boy to me, and he's mine! Mine, do you hear?—_mine?_" "My dear Susan——" our visitor began. "Don't 'dear Susan' me! I heard it once—once too often. Oh, never again! You left me to run away with her. I don't speak of that. I forgave that when I forgave her. But that was the least of it. You left her to herself for months before she died. You've left the boy to himself ever since. You can't begin now. I've worked my fingers to the bone for him—you can't make me stop now." "I went to California," he went on in a low voice, speaking with difficulty. "We didn't get on together as smoothly as we might perhaps, but I had no earthly notion of deserting her. I was ill myself, lying in yellow-fever quarantine off Key West, at the very time she died. When I finally got back you and the child were both gone. I could not trace you. I went to the war. I had made money in California. It is trebled now. I rose to be Colonel—I have a Brigadier's brevet in my pocket now. Yet I give you my word I never have desired anything so much, all the time, as to find you again—you and the boy." My Aunt nodded her head comprehendingly. I felt from the tremor of her hand that she was forcing herself against her own desires to be disagreeable. "Yes, that war," was what she said. "I know about that war! The honest men that go get killed. But you—_you_ come back!"