"Nurse!" said Fabius Waite, tensely, "he spoke. He recognized us.... What--what does that mean?" The nurse knew no more than they. It might be a promise held out to them; it might have been his farewell to the world. She could not tell. "He knew us," Fabius said to himself again and again. "He knew us." So the boy who could not live lived on. Intervals of consciousness came again and again, and lasted longer and longer. The physicians, who would not admit of hopes at first, were compelled--against their wills, it seemed--to give Potter a reluctant chance of recovery.... Another ten days saw him fully conscious--not safe yet, but with chances of safety multiplied. Though doubts existed in the medical mind, none were permitted to exist in the minds of Fabius Waite and his wife. Their son was to be given back to them; they _knew_ it. Despite fractured bones, despite invisible but awful injuries, Potter not only clung to the life that was in him, but reached out and strengthened his grasp upon it, until even the medical mind was convinced and, with due eye to its reputation, gave to the parents the assurance, "We've saved him," and then expatiated on the miracle wrought by its skill. Two months after the catastrophe Potter Waite was on his snail-like way to recovery. At first Potter seemed to have little curiosity regarding his accident. He appeared not to remember it or to have any idea why he was in his bed in a hospital. Later he asked questions. "Somebody was with me," he said one day. "When we fell ..." "Hildegarde von Essen," his mother said. "Was she--" "As well as ever," his mother said, a bit resentfully. "She has been out of the hospital for weeks." "That's ... good," said Potter. A day or two later he asked about his 'plane. "What's become of it?" he wanted to know. "It's up on the shore where you--fell," his mother said. "The shore?" he repeated. "The shore?... What shore?" "About ten miles up on Baltimore Bay," she said. He thought about that for minutes, and it was apparent he was not satisfied. "It was on an island," he said. "A little island ... not on Baltimore Bay.... Just back of the Flats." "No, son, it was on the mainland. You--you don't remember." He shook his head uneasily, and his eyes were puzzled. "There was an island," he said, and then let the subject drop as if he were too weary to go on with it. "Is the war still going on?" he asked, one day. "Yes." "Are we in it?" he asked, after a pause. "No." "We should--be," he said. "There's some reason why we should, but I seem to--have forgotten it." Day by day he grew stronger; day by day his memory returned to him, and he brooded over his recollections. For hours he would lie with closed eyes--thinking. It was the first quiet he had ever known; the first opportunity ever forced upon him to think. He remembered Major Craig. "Would you like to read to me?" he asked, one day. "I'd love to, son. What shall I read?"