“Come on and go back home with me,” urged the Doctor. “You’ve made good out here. Do the brave thing now and go back and live down the past. It’ll make the old folks so happy it’ll wipe out the heart-break of all those years that you’ve been away.”
Dan’s only response was another grasp of the Doctor’s hand as strong and as painful as the first. Pulling himself up by it he stood an instant trying to say something, then, too overcome to utter a word, made a dash for the door.
Doctor Huntingdon was so stirred by the scene that he found it difficult to go back to his letters, but the very next one in order happened to be the one Georgina wrote to her mother just after Belle had given her consent to Barby’s being told of Emmett’s confession. He read the latter part of it, standing, for he had sprung to his feet with the surprise of its opening sentence. He did not even know that Emmett had been dead all these years, and Dan, who had had no word from home during all his absence, could not know it either. He was in a tremor of eagerness to hurry to him with the news, but he waited to scan the rest of the letter.
Then with it fluttering open in his hand he strode across the hall and burst into Dan’s room without knocking.
“Pack up your junk, this minute, boy,” he shouted. “We take the first boat out of here for home. Look at this!”
He thrust Georgina’s letter before Dan’s bewildered eyes.
Chapter XXIX
While they Waited
“There comes the boy from the telegraph office.” Mrs. Triplett spoke with such a raven-like note of foreboding in her voice that Georgina, practising her daily scales, let her hands fall limply from the keys.
“The Tishbite!” she thought uneasily. What evil was it about to send into the house now, under cover of that yellow envelope? Would it take Barby away from her as it had done before?