When Ethan asked this question two days had elapsed since they brought the wounded man to the cabin. Much had happened during this time. In the first place Phil had proven himself a splendid amateur surgeon, for he had set the broken bones, and attended to securing splices so that they would be kept in proper position while the mending process continued. Of course this was somewhat old-fashioned, because a doctor would have set the limb in a plaster cast; but Phil's way promised to answer for all practical purposes. The man had improved remarkably. He was even cheerful, though at times Phil had seen him shake his head, and could hear him sigh. This was always while he was watching Mazie; and it did not require much to tell the boy that whatever was upon the man's troubled conscience concerned his child. "It's pretty hard to say, Ethan," he told the other; "I can't make up my mind that's he's any sort of a scamp. His actions tell us that, you know." "And it's hard for me to believe that any man who loves a child as he does that one of his, can be a bad man," Ethan declared, emphatically. "Yet you saw how he turned red in the face when I handed him the telegram, and explained how we found it caught under the bow seat of his birch-bark canoe," continued Phil, looking troubled. "What was it he mumbled at the time; I didn't quite get it?" Ethan asked. "He admitted," the other explained, "that the message had come to him. He also said that was not his real name, but one assumed for a purpose, of which he was now heartily ashamed." "That sounds queer, don't you think, Phil?" "Why, no, I can't say that I do," Ethan was told. "Any of us might do something on the spur of the moment that we found reason to feel sorry for afterwards. Only the other day I bitterly repented of insulting that noble old bull moose by daring to snap my camera at him point-blank, didn't I? He made it pretty warm for me, I tell you." "But this mysterious man must have done something dreadful, to have him say he was so repentant!" persisted Ethan. "You're only jumping at conclusions," he was told, bluntly. "I heard him say at the time he was lying there in the pine woods and suffering, that he realized he had done somebody a great wrong, and that if he lived he meant to right it. Now, according to my notion, that was a fine thing for him to say." "Mebbe so," remarked Ethan. "I've heard my father say that the best men are those who've been through the fire, done some wrong, and repented, so that they think they must spend the rest of their lives making good. And between us I kind of fancy Mazie's daddy. He seems to be a pretty nice man."