“Richard,” he said at last very softly, and Richard started, and bent over the sick man, whose eyes read his face for an instant, and then filled with great hot tears, as, winding his arms around the doctor’s neck, he sobbed, “It is my brother, ’tis Dick; and you will forgive me. I’ve got the money safe, honestly earned, too, every cent; more than enough to pay the debt, which I heard you were paying for me. Dear old Dick, we will be happy yet, but tell me first that you forgive me, tell me second how you found me, and tell me third of mother, and all—” He did not mention Anna, and Richard, in his reply, only answered the questions directly put. “Call mother,” Robert said, when told that she was there, and in a moment she was weeping on the pillow of her erring, but, as it would seem, deeply repentant child, for he repeated to her what he had said to Richard about the money, adding, “And this fall I was coming home to buy back the dear old place, if possible; I was, mother, I was; I’ve been so bad and wicked, but you will forgive me now, for since I left New York I have not been guilty of a single dishonorable act. Ask the people here, they know. They will tell you that among them all there is no one more popular than _Max_; I go by that name,” and Robert’s face crimsoned as he said this last. In his anxiety that his mother should forgive and think well of him, he grew so much excited that all she and Richard could do was to soothe him into quiet by assurances of forgiveness and love. He was too weak to talk longer, and he lay perfectly still, holding his mother’s hand and gazing into the dear face which bent so fondly over him. Once his lips quivered with some deep emotion, and when Richard asked what he would say, he answered: “Mother has changed so much,—her hair has all turned white. Was it for _me_, mother?” “Not wholly, Robert; it turned about the time when we lost Anna,” was Mrs. West answer. Instantly the sick man’s eyelids closed, and one after another the big tears rolled down his sunken cheeks, leaving a red, shining track, such as bitter, scalding tears always leave, but he made no comment, and Anna was not mentioned again until two days had passed, and he was so much better that he sat up in bed, propped on pillows, with his mother at his side, half supporting him. Then suddenly breaking a silence which had fallen upon them, he exclaimed: