“I must have ’im, Aunt Martha,” he said at last; “I must have ’em both. Some way we must get Gran’pap to make up with ’im. I don’t know how it’s to be done; but some way we must do it. It’s terrible to let it go on like this; an’ Gran’pap’s so good to me--so good. Why won’t he forgive ’im, Aunt Martha? Why won’t he?” “I don’t know, dearie. It’s his way. His father was so before him. It’s in the blood. All we can do, you and I, all we can do is to hope and to pray. Your grandfather will never yield to argument, nor to pleading. But I still have faith to believe that some time, in some way, the good God will bring about a reconciliation.” “Thank you, Aunt Martha! I shall hope for it, and pray for it, and work for it, too, every day and all day until it comes.” “And may it speedily come. There, now, you are very tired; go to sleep. Try to forget everything and go to sleep! You will feel better to-morrow. Good night!” “Good night, Auntie!” But when the morning came Dannie did not feel better. He slept late, yet he was not refreshed by his sleep. He was still tired, and his limbs dragged heavily as he went about the house. And, try as he might to forget it, that scene in the jury room the day before was ever present in his mind, a vivid picture of what he had found--and lost. Little by little the members of the household gathered from his lips the complete story of his journey through the storm. And while Abner Pickett smiled grimly at the boy’s pluck and will and mighty determination, since it proved him to be every inch a Pickett, Aunt Martha, moved by the lad’s tale of physical suffering, and touched by the moral energy that led him to endure it, turned her head away more than once to hide the tears that kept swelling to her eyes. In the afternoon Gabriel came home. Of the equity trial he could give no news except that the evidence had been completed and a day fixed for the argument of counsel. But of Dannie’s journey through the storm, of his appearance in the court room, of his testimony on the witness stand, he never ceased to talk. For days and weeks it formed the sole topic of his discourse. “It was wuth a year’s wages,” he declared many a time; “it was wuth a year’s wages not to ’a’ missed it. Ez ol’ Isra’l Pidgin use to say: ‘Truth is jest ez mighty an’ pervailin’ w’en it comes f’om the lips uv a child, ez w’en it comes f’om the mouth uv an archangel.’”