Closing the door softly behind him, he came across the floor, stepping very gently, lest he waken the sleepers in the big four-poster bed. When he stood at last beside the couch and looked down at them, something that had lived strong in him up to this moment died out, and its place was taken by something else, which he had never till then known. He gazed long at Callista's face on the pillow. She was very thin, his poor Callista; her temples showed the blue veins, the long oval of her cheek was without any bloom. Beside her, in the curve of her arm, lay the little bundle of new life. By bending forward, he could get a glimpse of the tiny face, and a sort of shock went through him at the sight. This was his son--Lance Cleaverage's son! With deft fingers he rolled the sheet away from the baby's countenance, so that he had a view of both, then sinking quietly to his knees, he studied them. Here was wife and child. Confronting him whose boyish folly had broken up the home on Lance's Laurel, was the immortal problem of the race. A son--and Lance had it in him, when life had sufficiently disciplined that wayward pride of his, to make a good father for a son. Long and silently he knelt there, communing with himself concerning this new element thrust into his plan, this candidate for citizenship on that island where [246] he had once figured the bliss of dwelling alone with Callista. Gropingly he searched for the clue to what his own attitude should now be. He had lived hard and gone footsore for the two of them. That was right, wasn't it? A man must do his part in the world. His own ruthers came after that. He recognized this as the test. Before, it had been the girl to be won; the bride, still to be wooed. In outward form these two were already his; could he make and hold them truly his own? Could he take them with him to that remote place where his spirit abode so often in loneliness? Callista's eyes, wide and clear, opened and fixed themselves on his. For some time she lay looking. She seemed to be adjusting the present situation. Then with a little whispered, childish cry, "Lance--oh, Lance!" she put out feeble arms to him, and he bent his face, tear-wet, to hers. [247] [Illustration: "He gazed long at Callista's face on the pillow."] CHAPTER XVII. THE COASTS OF THE ISLAND. LANCE Cleaverage remained at his father's house for a week, saying little, assisting deftly and adequately in the care of Callista, wondering always at the marvelous newcomer, and so rulable, so helpful and void of offense, that Roxy had her rod broken in her hand, and was forced to an unwilling admiration of him. "Looks like Sis' Callie is about to be the makin' o' Lance," she told her father. "I believe in my soul if she was a church member she'd have him convicted of sin at the next quarterly."