Max’s face, which, within a day or two, had grown very thin and was now purple with fever, was turned away from the doctor, who counted the rapid pulse, while the nurse admitted a ray of light, which shone full upon the sick man’s pillow, and made Dr. West start suddenly, and turn whiter even than the broad forehead round which the damp brown hair was curling. Then he bent anxiously over his patient, turning him more to the light, where he could see him distinctly. Did he recognize anything familiar in that sunken face, where the beard was growing so heavily,—anything which carried him back to his Northern home, where in his childhood every pastime had been shared by another, and that other his twin brother? Did he see anything which brought to him thoughts of Anna, dead so long ago, or of Robin, who died when the last summer flowers were blooming? Yes; and kneeling by the bedside he whispered, “Robert, Robert, is it you?” The bright eyes were open and fixed upon him, but with a vacant stare, while a second look at the flushed face brought a doubt into the doctor’s mind. “He is like my brother Robert, and yet he is not like him,” he thought, as he continued to scrutinize the features which puzzled him so much. “Mother will know,” he said at last; and going to his mother, he said to her hurriedly, “Come with me, and tell if you ever saw this Max before.” He was greatly excited, but not more so than his mother, who felt intuitively the shock awaiting her. “Open that blind wide, and put back that heavy curtain,” the doctor said to the frightened nurse, who quickly obeyed his orders, and then waited to see what would happen next. Max was talking and counting on his fingers till he came to twenty. “Yes, twenty, that’s it,” he said; “that’s the way the paper read; just twenty years of age, and Dick and I are six years older. Dick loved her, too; he ought to have married her. Dick was a trump.” “What does he say? What does he say? O Richard, what _does_ he say?” Mrs. West almost screamed, as she bent down so low that the hot fever breath lifted her silver hair. Richard made no answer, nor was there need, for the mother instinct recognized the _boy_, the wayward, wandering _Robert_, mourned for as dead during so many dreary years, while the mother-love, forgetting all the past, cried out, “My boy, my boy, my Robert, my child! God has given you back to me at last! Praised be His name!”