For an instant something like reason flashed over the wasted face, but it passed away, and to the mother’s continued murmurings of love there came only incoherent mutterings of the mountains, the mines, and stocks which seemed to have been substituted for the thoughts of the twenty years and the trump of a Dick, now ministering to the mother, who had fainted and was carried from the room. But she did not stay away long. Her place was by Robert, she said, and she went back to his side, saying to those around her, “He is my boy: he left me years ago, but I have found him at last.” People gossip in California as well as elsewhere, and the hotel was soon full of surmises and wonder, as people repeated to each other that the man known as Max was Robert West, who had taken another name and come among them, for what reason none could guess. The doctor and his mother knew the people would talk, but they did not heed it during the days when with agonizing suspense they hung over the bed of the prodigal, watching for some token of amendment, and praying that the erring one might not be taken from them now and leave the past a darker mystery than ever. He did not talk a great deal, but when he did it was mostly of home scenes in which Anna and Dick were always associated. Once when they sat alone and Mrs. West was resting in her room, Richard said to Robert, who had spoken of Anna as of some one there with him, “You mean your wife, Anna West; you know you married her privately.” For an instant the wild eyes flashed in Richard’s face, and then the delirious man replied, “Did _she_ tell you so?” “Not exactly, but I inferred as much, for when she lay dying, she said, ‘Call my baby for his father,’ and when I whispered ‘Robert,’ she nodded assent. They are both dead now, Anna and little Robin. Your wife, your baby, which never saw its father,” Richard continued, wishing to impress some idea upon his brother’s mind. But in vain, for Robert did not take the sense of what he heard, except indeed the word _baby_, which he kept repeating to himself, laughing insanely as he did so, “Anna’s baby; very funny,—very queer, when she was only a child herself,” he would whisper, and that was all which Richard achieved by speaking of the dead. But there came a day when the stupor passed from brain and head, leaving the latter free from pain and the former clear and bright. He had been sleeping, and when he woke only Richard was with him, and he was sitting where he did not at first observe the eyes fastened so curiously upon him, as Robert West’s heart alternately beat with hope and fear. He could not be mistaken, he said to himself. It was no dream that his brother had been there with him,—aye, was there still, looking older, sadder, but his brother all the same. Dick, the kindest, best brother in the world.