He sat up nervously in bed, trembling with the thought. The old surgeon guessed and bade him be quiet.
“You need not fear that,” he said, touching his arm. “The time has passed for fear. You were saved by the shadow of death and—the blood letting you had—and, well, a woman's lips, as many a man has been saved before you. You'd better sleep again now....”
He slept, but there were visions as there had been all along. And two persons came in now and then. One was Tom Travis, serious and quiet and very much in earnest that the patient might get well.
Another was Tom's wife, Alice, who arranged the wounded man's pillows with a gentleness and deftness as only she could, and who gave quiet orders to the old cook in a way that made Richard Travis feel that things were all right, though he could not speak, nor even open his eyes long enough to see distinctly.
A month afterward Richard Travis was sitting up. His strength came very fast. For a week he had sat by the fire and thought—thought. But no man knew what was in his mind until one day, after he had been able to walk over the place, he said:
“Tom, you and Alice have been kinder to me—far kinder—than I have deserved. I am going away forever, next week—to the Northwest—and begin life over. But there is something I wish to say to you first.”
“Dick,” said his cousin, and he arose, tall and splendid, before the firelight—“there is something I wish to say to you first. Our lives have been far apart and very different, but blood is blood and you have proved it, else I had not been here to-night to tell it.”
He came over and put his hand affectionately on the other's shoulder. At its touch Richard Travis softened almost to tears.
“Dick, we two are the only grandsons that bear his name, and we divide this between us. Alice and I have planned it. You are to retain the house and half the land. We have our own and more than enough. You will do it, Dick?”
Richard Travis arose, strangely moved. He grasped his cousin's hand. “No, no, Tom, it is not fair. No Travis was ever a welcher. It is all yours—you do not understand—I saw the will—I do not want it. I am going away forever. My life must lead now in other paths. But—”