"_George Ledyard Forges and Embezzles._" The man stood there a long while, the paper dropping in his hand. He read no more; his dry lips worked; once or twice he passed his hand over his face. At last, "That is what I saw on the steamer," he muttered slowly. "I saw this heading on the wireless bulletin on the steamer in which I was coming home. It made me ill. I was already weak, had fever. I went to my cabin and can remember no more." Suddenly Colter looked at the lawyer. "You will have to help me," he began in a firm voice; "things are rushing in on me. Tarrant; my brother's death, dishonor, the hospital. I got away from the hospital--I--I--help me," beseeched Colter thickly. He staggered, both hands out toward the lawyer. "I must keep my head clear. I can't let things sweep in too fast. I must keep my head clear," groaned the man. "Oh, for her sake, for her sake," he muttered. "Don't you see--for her sake!" The man stared with silent appeal. The strong tides of memory poured through his eyes. With hands desperately tossed up, with a body that seemed to snap under one groan, he fell unconscious at Shipman's feet. CHAPTER XXIII THE PERCEPTIONS OF MINGA The "explosive dust" of the Trout County court-room had not yet subsided. Two young heads had not yet bowed before the final judgments of the law. After a week of mysterious communings, sudden hidings of and exchanges of letters, a series of hidden glances and specially planned conferences, Dunstan and Minga announced at the breakfast table one morning that they would take the green car and be gone all day. They carefully did not state where they were going and no one dreamed the dramatic character of their plans. The rest of the family received the news without comment, the Judge merely remarking: "Wash the car before you use it, and pay for your own gas." Dunstan received these orders with benevolent understanding. "Well said," he approved his father impudently; with lifted eyebrows he grimaced at Sard. "We miss our good friend Colter," he murmured. "There was a fine literary washer of cars. I mind me of the splendid hexameters that rolled from the amnesian lips while he applied himself to the mud-guards." The dancing eyes questioned his sister's face. The Judge's watchful look went also to this face, but there was no book for the world to read. At whatever cost to her own hunger for sympathy the girl, sitting at the coffee urn, in Miss Aurelia's temporary absence, had the absorbed air of the knight who prays beside armor. For Sard was devising pathetic, youthful armors of self-control and wisdom. Her world could not share her belief nor be with her in her ardent things, therefore she would keep these ardent things bright and enshrined in her own lonely heart.