"I did try, twice after that," he stated, hesitatingly, "but I didn't have much surplus cash for travel in those days, or--or clothes, either. I'm afraid I wasn't too prepossessing an object, on any of those visits, after I had tramped in overland. The house was closed both times I came. And then I did write once--that was from San Domingo--the third year after I left college. I was so lonesome down there that I had to write, I think. But there--wasn't any reply, so I sort of thought perhaps----" He halted lamely, but his meaning was plain enough. Caleb faced about abruptly, his face sternly accusing. "Do you mean to hint that you ever dared believe we didn't want----" and there Sarah stopped him with an capable nod of her head. "We didn't get that letter, Steve," he finished. "If we only had we--we would have been less lonely waiting, too." Steve sat and stared down at his heavy boots. "I should have known that," he faltered. "I should have known that there were too many presidents on that island, both coming and going, for the mails to be infallible. But I wasn't just sure----" Miss Sarah cut in then and took the conversation serenely in hand. "We have something else of yours, Stephen," she said in her soft, almost lisping voice, "something which Caleb brought back with him which he has neglected to mention." She left them for a moment, and when she came back downstairs with the picture of the girl with the steady mouth and eyes her brother breathed with less difficulty than he had during her absence. For a second or so he had almost believed that she might have run across that bunch of loose tax receipts and the folded, legal-looking document which he had tucked away in his own iron box. Stephen O'Mara sat and looked long and long at his mother's picture. When he finally raised his head again Miss Sarah's eyes were misty, too. "This is one of the things for which I can never thank you enough," he murmured. "I can only tell you that I didn't know--I didn't understand----" Miss Sarah took the gilt-framed picture from his hand. She did not need his disconnectedly self-conscious explanation to understand. "Voluble, verbal gratitude is not an uncommon thing," she answered. "I am going to ask far more than that of you. I've kept her picture always on my table, Stephen, ever since we found it; and I should miss it greatly if I were not to see it often. Do you mind leaving it here, in your room upstairs? I am going to ask that of you, and if you don't mind doing so, then I--I would suggest, too, that you might kiss the--the first 'dressed up lady you ever did git to know,' who must bid you good-night now." The boyish hesitation with which he saluted Miss Sarah's faded pink cheek was far more delicately flattering than all the effusion in the world could ever have been. After she had left them alone Steve turned and gazed at Caleb, wonder in his face.