"To-morrow, please God, it shall end. I couldn't bear to tell them, who love me so, until I was sure, sure. The old surgeon said it might be a miracle would be enacted for my benefit. Well, it has, it has! I've known it, really, almost from the beginning, though it's been so hard and at times so seemingly hopeless. But if I hadn't loved them even more than myself, I wouldn't have kept on trying. To-morrow—the experiment in their presence! Will it ever come!"
The lad stood up and arranged the papers in his own desk. Then he heard, or fancied that he did, a slight sound in the deserted building. The corps of operatives had been well drilled to watch for any sign of that dreaded element, fire, and he was alert now,—the more that, following this, there was a slight odor, pungent and more alarming than even the first sound.
He wheeled about and—what was that? In the dimness of the angle where it lay, away out toward that closed office with its unsuspecting occupant, a tiny spark was making its steady, creeping progress. For an instant Hallam gazed at it astonished, the next he realized its full meaning and horror. Could he reach it? Was there time?
With a shriek of warning he rushed forward,—stumbling against, leaping over obstacles,—gaining upon that menacing point of fire and fume, which now seemed to race him like a living thing.
The miracle was wrought—two miracles! A few more seconds, and it would have been too late; but now the lame walked and, as it were, the dead came back to life.
Hallam's shriek, the uproar of overturned obstructions, reverberated through the empty building and brought Archibald Wingate, Amy, and poor Fayette face to face with the panting, excited rescuer. All comprehended at once what had been attempted and how prevented. The mill owner laid an iron grip upon the half-wit's shoulder, who made no effort to escape; for at last, at last, there had penetrated to his dim intelligence the wide, the awful difference between good and evil. When he saw the once crippled lad, whom his own hands had restored to health, thus fling away his life with unstinted hand, that he might save the life of another,—once his enemy also,—there had roused within the dormant brain of the foundling a sudden perception of Hallam's nobility and his own baseness. Therefore, stunned by this new knowledge, he stood humble and unresisting.
Amy's great heart comprehended just what and how her poor protégé was suffering. With her, to think was to act. She sprang to him and laid her small hand on his other shoulder, and the tender sympathy of this touch thrilled him more than the hard grasp of his master.
"Oh! but Hallam—Hallam—you walked! walked! you ran! You—you—who never—"
Her voice choked, ceased, and she turned from Fayette to fling herself headlong into her brother's arms. For the first time in their lives he could receive her and support her firmly. Then she stepped back and shook him. Gently at first, then violently. His crutches were—nobody cared where, though certainly not at hand; yet he stood fixedly, resisting her attacks, and again catching her to him with that overflowing joy that only such as he could guess.
"But I don't understand. Tell—tell; not here, though. Is all safe? No danger any more?"