“Your 'son'!” ejaculated the girl. “Why, ma'm, you-all ain't never even been married, as I've ever hearn tell, have you?” Auntie Sue drew her thin shoulders proudly erect, and, lifting her fine old face, answered the challenging question with splendid spirit: “No, I have never been married; but I might have been; and if I had, I suppose I could have had a son, couldn't I?” The vanquished Judy retreated to the kitchen, where, in safety, she sank into a chair, convulsed with laughter, which she instinctively muffled in her apron. Then came the day when the man, weak and worn with his struggle, looked up at his gentle old nurse with the light of sanity in his deep blue eyes. Very tired eyes they were, and filled with painful memories,--filled, too, with worshipping gratitude and wonder. She smiled down at him with delighted triumph, and drawing a chair close beside the bed, seated herself and placed her soft hand on his where it lay on the coverlid. “You are much better, this morning,” she said cheerily. “You will soon be all right, now.” And as she looked into the eyes that regarded hers so questioningly, there was in her face and manner no hint of doubt, or pretense, or reproach;--only confidence and love. He spoke slowly, as if feeling for words: “I have been in Hell; and you--you have brought me out. Why did you do it?” “Because you are mine,” she answered, with her low chuckling laugh. It was so good to have him able to talk to her rationally after those long hours of fighting. “Because I am yours?” he repeated, puzzling over her words. “Yes,” she returned, with a hint of determined proprietorship in her voice; “because you belong to me. You see, that eddy where your boat landed is my property, and so anything that drifts down the river and lodges there belongs to me. Whatever the river brings to me, is mine. The river brought you, and so--” She finished with another laugh,--a laugh that was filled with tender mother-yearning. The blue eyes smiled back at her for a moment; then she saw them darken with painful memories. “Oh, yes; the river,” he said. “I wanted the river to do something for me, and--and it did something quite different from what I wanted.”