"There's a change there," he muttered to himself; "and I'll be hanged if I can analyze it. It's a curious sort of settling down of the boy's whole nature, as if he had thrown off some maddening strain or other, as if he were getting some new sort of grip upon himself. I wonder what it is. He's not better, nor worse; it can't be his health, then. Bodily, he is just about holding his own; nervously, he is steadying. I believe I'll talk it up with Olive; he may have given her a clue." Olive, however, questioned, had no ideas upon the subject. She too had noticed the change, had felt it, rather; it was too slight really to be noticed. She had wondered at it. It was as if Opdyke were slowly tightening all his contacts with what of life there still was left to him, determining to make the best of a bad matter, and to extract all the enjoyment he was able out of his narrowing surroundings. Reason about the cause of this as Olive would, she could not fathom it. Was Opdyke merely sickening of the individual members of his scanty calling list, and seeking to increase its variety? Or was he slowly gathering up some of the broken ties, ready for the day when once more he should leave his prison and walk out among them, a free man? Of two things, though, Olive was assured. The change had started a good two months earlier, had dated, as nearly as she could reckon backwards, from the time of Whittenden's brief visit. And the change, whatever else its alterations in the life of Opdyke, had made not one grain of difference with their friendship. Indeed, it seemed to Olive now and then that Opdyke turned to her society the more eagerly after a protracted season of receiving varied calls. However, well he might turn to Olive! It was fifteen months, now, since his accident, fifteen months that the brace of New York surgeons had professed their inability to predict a future. Uncertainty like that is bound to tell on any man; and, throughout it all, Olive Keltridge never once had failed him.