As a matter of fact, Reuben was to remain there considerably longer than that. When it was time for him to return to college his father was just out of danger and Reuben did not dream of leaving him. He did not, indeed, return to college again until the following autumn. As soon as Dick Cartwright was able to be about the house, Mrs. Lorraine returned to Miss Penny’s, and Reuben and his father took the cottage as their home. Reuben got a position in the bank at Wenham and went back and forth to his work happily. His father kept house. As he grew stronger, Mr. Langley persuaded him to practice on the church organ. In the late spring, he was back again in his old position of organist at Farleigh church, and in the summer he secured, with Mr. Langley’s help, the position to teach music in the public schools at Wenham. This gave him a sufficient income not only to live comfortably but to pay Reuben’s expenses at college. Reuben, however, still preferred to work his way through, so the money was saved towards the pipe organ. * * * * * To return now to Mr. Langley and the day before Christmas--that Christmas which was to be the happiest of his life. He hadn’t realised that he was tired until he opened his own gate late that afternoon. Then suddenly such a dead weight of fatigue dropped down upon him that he felt as if he couldn’t crawl to his own door. Certainly he could never attain the sanctuary of his study where he could think over the events of the afternoon and realise the joy that had come to him with the return of his friend as it were from the gates of death. Someone came to the door and peered eagerly up the street. It was Anna Miller. Forgetting himself, Mr. Langley called to her and hurried up the steps. “O Anna, is anything wrong?” he asked anxiously, for he would have thought of her as being somewhere with Rusty and Reuben. “Wrong!” the girl echoed with ringing voice and beaming face. “O Mr. Langley, everything is so beautifully right that it seemed as if you would never, never come. O hurry, please.” She led him, not as he expected, towards his wife’s door, but into the front room across the passage from the study. It had been the parlour but was seldom used now-a-days. It looked exceedingly cheerful now, but so would the cellar have looked to Mr. Langley had the potato-bin held the same group that he saw on the brocaded sofa. Mrs. Langley, bright and alert with flushed cheeks and not uncomely, despite Seth Miller’s opinion, sat thereon with Joe, Junior, curled up beside her while Big Bell hung over them, trying now to make herself inconspicuous and really appearing to be twice her natural size.