"I don't try to account for it. A great deal of energy is wasted in trying to account for the unknowable. I shall take it as it is."
"What has become of Colonel Winchester, sir?"
"He rode yesterday to a tiny hamlet about twenty miles away. We had heard from a mountaineer that an officer returning from the war was there, and since we old soldiers like to foregather, we decided to have him come and join our party. They are due here, and unless my eyes deceive me—and I know they don't—they're at the bead of the valley now, riding toward this house."
Harry detected a peculiar note in Colonel Talbot's voice, and his mind leaped at once to a conclusion.
"That officer is my father!" he exclaimed.
"According to all the descriptions, it is he, and now you can sit up and welcome him."
The meeting between father and son was not demonstrative, but both felt deep emotion.
"Fortune has been kind to us, Harry, to bring us both safely out of the long war," said Colonel Kenton.
"Kinder than we had a right to hope," said Harry.
The entire group rode together to Pendleton, and Dick was welcomed like one risen from the dead by his mother, who told him a few weeks later that he was to have a step-father, the brave colonel, Arthur Winchester.