"No; I didn't mean to tell any one. But to think of his coming out here to nurse me, leaving Verda on the very night he married her! A brother of my own blood wouldn't have done it."
The young woman was looking up with a shrewd little smile. "Maybe the blood brother would do even that, if you had just made it possible for him to marry the girl he'd set his heart on, John."
"Piffle!" growled the man. And then: "Hasn't the time come when you can tell me a little more about what happened to me after the doctor put me to sleep that night at the dam?"
"Yes. The only reason you haven't been told was because we didn't want you to worry; we wanted you to have a chance to get well and strong again."
The man's eyes filled suddenly, and he took no shame. He was still shaky enough in nerve and muscle to excuse it. "Nobody ever had such friends, Corona," he said. "You all knew I'd have to go back to Lawrenceville and fight it out, and you didn't want me to go handicapped and half-dead. But how did they come to let you take me away? I've known Macauley ever since I was in knickers. He is not the man to take any chances."
The young woman's laugh was soundless. "Mr. Macauley wasn't asked. He thinks you are dead," she said.
"What!"
"It's so. You were not the only one wounded in the fight at the dam. There were two others—two of M'Graw's men. Three days later, just as Colonel-daddy and Billy Starbuck were getting ready to steal you away, one of the others died. In some way the report got out that you were the one who died, and that made everything quite easy. The report has never been contradicted, and when Mr. Macauley reached Brewster the police people told him that he was too late."
"Good heavens! Does everybody in Brewster think I'm dead?"
"Nearly everybody. But you needn't look so horrified. You're not dead, you know; and there were no obituaries in the newspapers, or anything like that."