She bustled away, into her bright kitchen first, and then with happy stealth to the store-room. Her very heart was singing within her. She neither thought nor reasoned. Dick was back, and all would be well. If she had any subconscious anxieties they were quieted, also subconsciously, by confidence in the men who were fighting his battle for him, by Walter Wheeler and Bassett and Harrison Miller. That Dick himself would present any difficulty lay beyond her worst fears. She had been out of the room only twenty minutes when she returned to David and prepared to break her great news. At first she thought he was asleep. He was lying back with his eyes closed and his hands crossed on the prayer-book. But he looked up at her, and was instantly roused to full attention by her face. “You've had some news,” he said. “Yes, David. There's a little news. Don't count too much on it. Don't sit up. David, I have heard something that makes me think he is alive. Alive and well.” He made a desperate effort and controlled himself. “Where is he?” She sat down beside him and took his hand between hers. “David,” she said slowly, “God has been very good to us. I want to tell you something, and I want you to prepare yourself. We have heard from Dick. He is all right. He loves us, as he always did. And--he is downstairs, David.” He lay very still and without speaking. She was frightened at first, afraid to go on with her further news. But suddenly David sat up in bed and in a full, firm voice began the Te Deum Laudamus. “We praise thee, O God: we acknowledge thee to be the Lord. All the earth doth worship thee, the Father everlasting.” He repeated it in its entirety. At the end, however, his voice broke. “O Lord, in thee have I trusted--I doubted Him, Lucy,” he said. Dick, waiting at the foot of the stairs, heard that triumphant paean of thanksgiving and praise and closed his eyes. It was a few minutes later that Lucy came down the stairs again. “You heard him?” she asked. “Oh, Dick, he had frightened me. It was more than a question of himself and you. He was making it one of himself and God.” She let him go up alone and waited below, straining her ears, but she heard nothing beyond David's first hoarse cry, and after a little she went into her sitting-room and shut the door. Whatever lay underneath, there was no surface drama in the meeting. The determination to ignore any tragedy in the situation was strong in them both, and if David's eyes were blurred and his hands trembling, if Dick's first words were rather choked, they hid their emotion carefully. “Well, here I am, like a bad penny!” said Dick huskily from the doorway. “And a long time you've been about it,” grumbled David. “You young rascal!” He held out his hand, and Dick crushed it between both of his. He was startled at the change in David. For a moment he could only stand there, holding his hand, and trying to keep his apprehension out of his face.