Bruce could not help laughing at the young girl’s serious manner of talking about what she persisted in calling the mystery of his birth. His mind was full of the fire department just then, and of the bright prospects which Chief Trask had opened to him by promising to allow him to go to all the fires just as if he were a regular member of the company. So he told Laura that at that moment he had no opportunity to pursue the investigations in which she seemed to take so much interest, but he assured her that the moment he found himself well enough to leave the hospital he would continue his search for the tall dark man with the scar across his face whom they both agreed was in some way identified with his early life. At the end of fifteen minutes Laura went away promising to write him a letter as soon as possible, and leaving him with the cheering assurance that Harry would be down as soon as he had either learned his lessons or escaped from his tutor. Indeed during the whole of her visit she was haunted by an awful fear that her brother had clambered down the wisteria vine and might enter the door at any moment. Harry did not appear until an hour or more after his sister had gone. Mr. Reed was with him, and they had stopped to buy a basket of fruit as a present for the injured boy. Harry was overflowing with sympathy, and Mr. Reed was very much more cordial than he had ever been before. “I suppose,” said the tutor as he and his pupil were taking their leave, “that you have not many friends in town to come to visit.” “Oh, I’ve had two callers already this morning before you came,” replied Bruce; “Chief Trask came first and then—” The boy stopped short, colored, hesitated, and then went on, “and there was another friend of mine who came. She just went away a little while ago.” Both his visitors noticed his hesitation and Harry wondered if it could be possible that his sister had been down there ahead of him, but he said nothing to Mr. Reed of his suspicions. He resolved however to get at the truth of the matter so that he might have something fresh to taunt his sister with the next time they quarrelled. It is doubtful if the whole city of New York contained a happier boy than the one who was lying, sorely wounded and with his eyes inflamed and almost blinded, in a narrow white cot in a common hospital ward. The sun was shining brightly through the tall windows, and the distant hum and roar of the great city sounded faintly in his ears. He knew that it would be many weeks, perhaps months, before he could hope to resume the career which had been interrupted so suddenly the day before, and to a boy who had never known a day’s illness in his life the prospect of a long, irksome confinement was anything but pleasant. Nevertheless, Bruce Decker felt that he had a great deal to make him happy just then.