[CHAPTER XIV]
A TURN OF FORTUNE'S TIDE
For a moment Rob's heart beat quick with joy and his face became radiant; then it clouded again as he said, quietly:
"I think you must be mistaken, sir; for I received a cablegram in America that my father was too ill to travel, and longed to see me before he died. That is the reason I am now here."
"No," asserted the stranger, whose name, as Rob afterwards learned, was Bishop, "I am confident there can be no mistake, for I saw Dr. and Mrs. Mason Hinckley in Hong-Kong. I was newly arrived, and had gone with an acquaintance to arrange for a lot of stuff to be taken aboard the Canton boat. While we were there, another boat of the same line came in from the upper Si Kiang. She had but two European passengers, a lady, and her husband who was so weak from illness that we assisted him to a carriage. My friend knew them slightly, and after they were gone he told me that they were a missionary doctor and his wife from Wu Hsing, that their name was Hinckley, that the doctor had been critically ill, but had most unexpectedly rallied, so that he was able to travel, and that they were to leave for the States on the China, which sailed that evening. All this was distinctly impressed on my mind by the news of the Wu Hsing outbreak, which came a week later, and I was glad to remember that two at least of the possible victims had escaped in time."
Rob listened breathlessly to these details, and, when Mr. Bishop finished speaking, he exclaimed: "They are alive, then, and safe! If I only had known, and stayed quietly where I was! Do you remember the date, sir, on which you saw them in Hong-Kong?"
"Yes, it was the 10th of last month."
"The very day on which I was to have sailed from Tacoma, and they must have sent another cable after I left Hatton. It's all right, though, and I am too glad to care about anything else."
"It is too bad that you have missed each other, and still are on opposite sides of the world; but I suppose you will follow them by the next homeward-bound steamer, and so rejoin them inside of another six weeks. I envy you, and only wish I had a prospect of again seeing the States within the same number of months."