The doctor colored. “Mrs. Bogardus has given me a telegram to send, and I don't know whether to send it or not. It's going to make a whole lot of talk. I am not much acquainted with Mrs. Bogardus myself, except by hearsay. That's partly what surprises me. It looks a little reckless to send out such a message as that, by the first hand that comes along. Hadn't we better give her time to think it over?” He opened the telegram for the other to read. “The man himself can't speak. But he just pants for breath every time she comes near him: he tries to hide his face. He acts like a criminal afraid of being caught.” “He didn't look that way to me--what was left of him. Not in the least like a criminal.” “Well, no; that's a fact, too. Now they've got him laid out clean and neat, he looks as if he might have been a very decent sort of man. But _that_, you know--that's incredible. If she knows him, why doesn't he know her? Why won't he own her? He's afraid of her. His eyes are ready to burst out of his head whenever she comes near him.” “Did Mrs. Bogardus write that telegram herself?” “She did.” “And what did she tell you to do with it?” “Send it to her son.” “Then why don't you send it?” This was the disputed message: “Come. Your father has been found. Bring Doctor Gainsworth.” In the local man's opinion, the writer of that dispatch was Doctor Gainsworth's true patient. What could induce a woman in Mrs. Bogardus's position to give such hasty publicity to this shocking disclosure, allowing it were true? The more he dwelt on it the less he liked the responsibility he was taking. He discussed it openly; and, with the best intentions, this much-impressed young man gave out his own counter-theory of the case, hoping to forestall whatever mischief might have been done. He put himself in the place of Mr. Paul Bogardus, whom he liked extremely, and tried to imagine that young gentleman's state of mind when he should look upon this new-found parent, and learn the manner of his resurrection.