He raked slowly. If you took your time, raking could kill the crawling hours of fate. Thinking built up facts, and facts fitted together like bricks in a wall. Ambrose Carver still had Mrs. Munson’s ear. Sonny had not been a glittering success on the coast, else he would not have returned for a part in a show paying twenty-five dollars a week. Playing small time on the coast, Sonny would not have accumulated money for a return journey across a continent. Somebody had paid for his railroad ticket. Amby? Joe couldn’t imagine the dapper little agent buying anybody’s ticket. Then it must have been Mrs. Munson, still piqued because of the failure of her nephew. Joe put the rake away. Every leaf was garnered and burned, and raking had become a fiction. When he came into the house, his mother was upstairs. He dialed the radio, brought in FKIP, and left the station on. By and by Vic Wylie’s four o’clock show went on and went off. A watch company gave a spot announcement of the time, and a commentator gave five minutes of news flashes from around the world. A quartet sang. They’d be off in ten minutes. They were off. A voice broke into the silence of the room. “To-day Munson brings you a story from the pen of Curt Lake, _Sue Davis Against the World_—” The Munson plug followed—a Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday sale of coats on the third floor. Then came that momentary pause that always comes between the commercial plug and the show itself. Joe’s mouth was dry. He had heard no sound on the stairs, yet he knew his mother sat behind him. “And now,” came an announcer’s crisp voice, “what has become of Dick Davis? Six days ago, with slender family finances almost exhausted, he left home to get to Fairfield as best he could, taking with him his only possession of possible value, an album containing a modest collection of stamps. For six days Sue Davis has anxiously awaited her son’s return. Is he all right? Has he reached Fairchild? Have the stamps which he has been patiently soaking from discarded envelops for several years any real value? Perhaps we are to learn, for the scene is the small office of Landis, the Stamp Man. The door opens and a boy enters. Listen.” Voices came out of the speaker, and the first voice was boyish, and troubled and hesitant: Are you Mr. Landis? Hello, son. Yes; I’m Mr. Landis. Close the door, please. You look as though you’ve been traveling. I have. I’m Dick Davis. I come from Maple Grove. That’s a good piece back in the mountains, isn’t it? Yes, sir. I—I thought—Do you buy stamps? Something that was like ice prickled and crawled on Joe’s scalp. A miracle was happening. Vic Wylie had prepared him for the miracle, and yet he had not expected so stupendous a miracle. One of the voices coming out the speaker was his. Not his exactly—but his.