"Who could doubt it? _I will arise and go unto my father._ The old man's whim to be buried here had a meaning, after all. The statue is Miss Holme's work--nobody in Smoky Mountain could do it--and I've seen her modelling in clay at the sanatorium. What we saw just now is the key to what might have been a pretty riddle if we had ever looked further than our noses. It's a case of a clever rascal and damnable propinquity. The ward has fallen in love with the black sheep!" They betook themselves down the mountain in silence, the doctor wondering how deep a hurt lay back of that instant's color on his friend's now imperturbable face, and more than disturbed on Jessica's account. Her care for the cross-grained, likable invalid had touched him. "A fine old man to own a worthless son," he said at length, musingly. "A gentleman of the old school. Your amiable blackleg has education and good blood in him, too!" "I've wondered sometimes," said Felder, "if the old Hugh Stires, that disreputable one that came here, wasn't the unreal one, and the Hugh Stires the town is beginning to like, the real one, brought back by the accident that took his memory. You medical men have cases of such double identity, haven't you?" "The books have," responded the other, "but they're like Kellner's disease or Ludwig's Angina--nobody but the original discoverer ever sees 'em." As they parted at the station the doctor said: "We needn't take the town into our confidence, eh? Some one will stumble on the statue sooner or later, but we won't help the thing along." He looked shrewdly in the other's face as they shook hands. "You know the old saying: There's as many good fish in the sea as ever were caught." The lawyer half laughed. "Don't worry," he said. "If I had been in danger, the signal was hung out in plenty of time!" CHAPTER XXXI THE REVELATION OF HALLELUJAH JONES Hallelujah Jones was in his element. With his wheezy melodeon, his gasoline flare and his wild earnestness, he crowded the main street of the little mining-town, making the engagement of the "San Francisco Amazons" at the clapboard "opera house" a losing venture. The effete civilization of wealthy bailiwicks did not draw forth his powers as did the open and unveneered debaucheries of less restricted settlements. Against these he could inveigh with surety, at least, of an appreciative audience. He had not lacked for listeners here, for he was a new sensation. His battered music-box, with its huge painted text, was far and away more attractive than the thumping pianolas of the saloons or the Brobdignagian gramophone of the dance-hall, and his old-fashioned songs were enthusiastically encored. When he lit his flare in the court-house square at dusk on the second evening, the office of the Mountain Valley House was emptied and the bar-rooms and gaming-tables well-nigh deserted of their patrons.