As I saw my brother-cousin, Jack Bickett, whom I had so long mourned as dead, coming toward me in Lillian Underwood's living room, I stumbled to my feet, and, with no thought of spectators, or of anything save the fact that the best friend I had ever known had come back to me, I rushed into his arms, and clung to him wildly, sobbing out all the heartache and terror that had been mine since Dicky had left me in so cruel and mysterious a manner. I felt as a little child might that had been lost and suddenly caught sight of its father or mother. The awful burden that had been mine lifted at the very sight of Jack's pale face smiling down at me. I knew that someway, somehow, Jack would straighten everything out for me. "There, there, Margaret." Jack's well-remembered tones, huskier, weaker by far than when I had last heard them, soothed me, calmed me. "Everything's going to come out all right. I'll see to it all. Sit down, and let me hear all about it." There was an indefinable air of embarrassment about him which I could not understand at first. Then I saw beyond him the lovely flushed face of Katharine Sonnot, and in her eyes there was a faintly troubled look. I read it all in a flash. Jack was embarrassed because I had so impetuously embraced him before Katherine. I withdrew myself from his embrace abruptly, and drew a chair for him near my own. "Are you sure you are fully recovered?" I asked, and I saw Jack look wonderingly at the touch of formality in my tone. "No, I cannot say that," he returned gravely, "but I am so much better off than so many of the other poor chaps who survived, that I have no right to complain. Mine was a body wound, and while I shall feel its effects on my general health for years, perhaps all my life, yet I am not crippled." His tone was full of thankfulness, and all my pettiness vanished at the sudden, swift vision of what he must have endured. The next moment he had turned my thoughts into a new channel. "Margaret," he said gravely, "I am terribly distressed to hear from Katherine that your husband has gone away in such a strange manner." So she had already told him! The little pang of unworthy jealousy came back, but I banished it. "Now, there must be no more time lost," he went on. "You have had no man to look after things for you, but remember now, your old brother, Jack, is on the job. First, I must know everything that occurred on that last day. Did you notice anything extraordinary in his demeanor on that last morning you saw him?" This was the old Jack, going directly to the root of the matter, wasting no time on his own affairs or feelings, when he saw a duty before him. I felt the old sway of his personality upon me, and answered his questions as meekly as a child might have done. "He was just the same as he had been every morning since my accident," I returned. "H-m." Jack thought a long minute, then began again.