“Yes,” replied the principal of the academy, “I brought Charley with me for a most excellent reason, as you’ll soon learn. He has hurt his ankle and is very lame.” In the sitting room Shultz staggered and nearly fell, for he suddenly found himself face to face with Ned Osgood. “You?” he exclaimed in amazement. “You here? Then you’ve told them everything!” Osgood seized him, swept him off his feet and practically bore him into another room. “Look, Charley!” he cried, pointing at a person who sat in the depths of a big easy-chair, near which hovered Mrs. Hooker. “Here he is! He’s all right now, too. He’s all right, for he can talk and he remembers.” The person on the easy-chair was Roy Hooker! CHAPTER XXVII LIKE A MIRACLE. Only for Osgood’s sustaining arm, Shultz would have collapsed completely. Ned helped him to a chair, where he sat staring in dumb amazement and doubt at Roy Hooker. It was a marvel of marvels, a miracle beyond his understanding. “I’m dreaming,” he thought. “It can’t be true.” But Roy was there. Roy was speaking. Shultz heard him say: “You look to be in worse condition than I am, old fellow. You’re all broken up.” Shultz was broken up indeed. Not a sound did he make, but he covered his face with his hands, and tears began trickling through his fingers. Then he felt some one touching him gently, reassuringly, and heard the husky voice of Professor Richardson, the man he had scorned and sneered at, saying gently, almost tenderly: “There, there, my boy. It’s all right. You made a mistake, as we all do sometimes, but you’ve been punished more than enough. I am sure no one could wish you to receive further punishment.” Then Hooker spoke again: “Why, he wasn’t to blame any more than I was—not as much. I started it. I lost my head and called him nasty names and tried to hit him. I’m the one who is really to blame for everything.” Somehow this made Charley’s tears flow the faster. He did not sob, he did not speak, but he sat there with a great feeling of gratitude in his heart and a yearning to say something to Roy Hooker which he knew he never could say. “We were all to blame,” asserted Ned. “No one fellow should try to take it on himself; I’m dead certain other chaps in the bunch will agree to that.” “It will be a lesson to you all,” said the old professor. “Mrs. Hooker, I congratulate you that your son is again in his normal mind and apparently not much the worse for his experience. It has been a trying time for us all, and we should be thankful indeed that it has turned out so well.” Through his tear-wet eyelashes Shultz was looking at Roy. “I—I don’t understand,” he whispered. “I saw him fall into the old quarry.”