"I feel pretty well battered up," the old man continued, his voice growing stronger, "but I think I can move a little." He stirred slightly under his blanket, a fact the nurse noted with joyful intentness. "So I think I'm all here. Are you so glad, Dick, that you can cry about it?" The smile came then upon his grandson's lighting face. "Glad, grandfather?" said he, with some difficulty. "Why, you're all I have in the world! I shouldn't know how to face it without you." The old man dropped off to sleep again, his hand contentedly resting in his grandson's. Presently the doctor looked in, studied the situation in silence, held a minute's whispered colloquy with the nurse, then moved to Richard's side. The young man looked up at him and he nodded. He bent to Richard's ear. "Things look different," he whispered succinctly. At the slight sibilance of the whisper the old man opened his eyes again. His glance travelled up the distinguished physician's body to his face. He smiled in quite his own whimsical way. "Fooled even a noted person like you, did I, Winston?" he chuckled feebly. "Just because I chose to go to sleep and didn't fidget round much you thought I'd got my quietus, did you?" "I think you're a pretty vigorous personality," responded the physician, "and I'm quite willing to be fooled by you. Now I want you to take a little nourishment and go to sleep again. If you think so much of this young man of yours you can have him again in an hour, but I'm going to send him away now. You see, he's been sitting right there all night." Matthew Kendrick's eyes rested fondly again upon Richard's smiling face. "You rascal!" he sighed. "You always did give me trouble about being up o' nights!" * * * * * Richard Kendrick ran downstairs three steps at a bound. At the bottom he met Judge Calvin Gray. He seized the hand of his grandfather's old-time friend and wrung it. The expression of heavy sadness on the Judge's face changed to one of bewilderment, and as he scanned the radiant countenance of Matthew Kendrick's grandson he turned suddenly pale with joy. "You don't mean--" Then he comprehended that Richard was finding it as hard to speak good news as if it had been bad. But in an instant the young man was in command of himself again. "It wasn't apoplexy--it wasn't paralysis--it was only the shock of the fall and the bruises. He's been talking to me; he's been twitting the doctor on having been fooled. Oh, he's as alive as possible, and I--Judge Gray, I never was so happy in my life!" With congratulations in his heart for his old friend on the possession of this young love which was as genuine as it was strong, the Judge said: "Well, my dear fellow, let us thank God and breathe again. This has been the darkest night I've spent in many a year--and this is the brightest morning."