An hour later, when Mr. Hamilton came in, the happiest spot in all the Flowery Kingdom was the little living-room of "The House of the Misty Star."
Page was asleep through sheer exhaustion, and the father, with lowered voice and dimmed eyes, told the story.
The explanation was all so simple I felt as if I should be sentenced for not thinking of it before. For had I not seen what tricks the heat of the Orient could play with the brain cells of a white man? Had I not seen men and women go down to despair under some fixed hallucination, conjured from the combination of overwork and a steamed atmosphere—transforming happy, normal humans into fear-haunted creatures, ever pursued by an unseen foe? In such a fever-racked mind lay all Page's troubles.
For the last four years he had held a place of heavy responsibility with a large oil concern in Singapore. His duties led him into isolated districts. Danger was ever present, but a Malay robber was no more treacherous an enemy than the heat, and far less subtle. One day, after some unusually hard work, Page turned in his money and reports, and went his way under the blistering sun.
It was then that the fever played its favorite game by confusing his brain and tangling his thoughts. He wandered down to the docks and aboard a tramp steamer about to lift anchor. When the vessel was far away the fateful disease released its grip on his body. But in the many months of cruising among unnamed islands in southern seas, it cruelly mocked him with a belief he had purloined the money and taunted him with forgetfulness as to the hiding place.
When Page left the ship at a Japanese port memory cleared enough to give him back a part of his name, but tricked him into hiding from a crime he had not committed.
My remorse was unmeasurable as I realized the whole truth, but my heart out-caroled any lark that ever grew a feather. The boy's soul was as clean as our love for him was deep.
