"Thought my father was dead?" he said.
"No matter what any of you thought, I am alive and I am here. Open the door."
There was an air of authority about this man who claimed to be the Mr. Thompson whom Mrs. Smithers had first married, and Tommy no longer refused to obey him.
He opened the door of the room in which a good fire was burning, and the stranger carried the woman in, laying her on a sofa, and chafing her hands so as to circulate the blood and restore her to consciousness.
Tommy could scarcely realize the fact that this rough, ragged and ugly man was the father of whom he had heard his mother speak so often.
Young as he was when his father went West—only to die, as was reported and supposed—he remembered a very different sort of person.
In the course of a few minutes, during which Tommy remained standing near the closed door, in an awestruck sort of manner, Mrs. Smithers became herself again.
Her mind was clear, and the passing faintness having gone away, she looked the stranger in the face.
"Thomas," she said, softly, "what is the meaning of this? I heard from one of your friends that you were dead."
"All thought me so," he answered. "I was in a wild part of the country, where I had gone to make money for you and our child——"