She meditated. "Perhaps a very small allowance, in fact, to make my will sound I may have to. I must find out about that. But while I'm alive, not one cent. I never expected to be glad his father died before he was born, and so didn't leave him anything, but I am. No, sir; my son can earn what he wants or he can go without. I've got to do my best to make up to him for all the harm I've done him, and this is the way to do it. Now, the next thing is to make my will sound. He says he'll contest it"—she gave her grunt of amusement. "Pity I can't see him do it! I'd like the fun of it. It will be cast-iron. If there was any doubt about it, I would realize on every security I own to-morrow and give it all away in one lump, now, while I'm alive—if I had to go hungry myself afterward! Will you ask Howe and Marston to send their Mr. Marston up here to draw up a new will for me? I want to go to work on it to-night. I've thought it out pretty clearly, but it's a big job, a big job! I don't know myself exactly how much I'm worth—how much I'd clean up to, at any rate. But I've got a list of charities on my desk as long as your arm. Nannie will be the residuary legatee; she has some money from her father, too, though not very much. The Works didn't amount to much when my husband was alive; he divided his share between Nannie and me; he—"; she paused, reddening faintly with that strange delicacy that lay hidden under the iron exterior; "he didn't know Blair was coming along. Well, I suppose Nannie will give Blair something. In fact, she as good as warned me. Think of Nannie giving me notice! But as I say, she won't have any too much herself. And, Mr. Ferguson, I want to tell you something: I'm going to give David some money now. I mean in a year or two. A lot."

Robert Ferguson's face darkened. "David doesn't take money very easily."

Mrs. Maitland did not ask him to explain. She was absorbed in the most tremendous venture of her life—the saving of her son, and her plan for David was comparatively unimportant. She put through the business of her will with extraordinary despatch and precision, and with a ruthlessness toward Blair that took her lawyer's breath away; but she would not hear one word of protest.

"Your business, sir, is to see that this instrument is unbreakable," she said, "not to tell me how to leave my money."

The day after the will was executed she went to Philadelphia. "I am going to see David," she told her general superintendent; "I want to get this affair off my mind so I can settle down to my work, but I've got to square things up first with him. You'll have to run the shop while I'm off!"

She had written to David briefly, without preface or apology:

"DEAR DAVID,—Come and see me at the Girard House Tuesday morning at 7.45 o'clock."

CHAPTER XXV

Nearly two months had passed since that dreadful day when David Richie had gone to his mother to be comforted. In his journey back across the mountains his mind and body were tense with anticipation of the letter which he was confident was awaiting him in Philadelphia. He was too restless to lie down in his berth. Once he went into the day coach and wandered up and down the aisle between the rows of huddled and uncomfortable humanity. Sometimes a sleepy passenger, hunched up on a plush seat, would swear at him for jostling a protruding foot, and once a drearily crying baby, propped against a fat and sleeping mother, clutched with dirty fingers at his coat. At that little feeble pull he stopped and looked down at the small, wabbling head, then bent over and lifted the child, straightening its rumpled clothes and cuddling it against his shoulder. The baby gurgled softly in his ear—and instantly he remembered the baby he had seen on the raft the night that he first knew he was in love with Elizabeth. When he went back to the smoking-compartment and sat down, his hands deep in his pockets, his head sunk between his shoulders, his hat pulled down over his eyes, he thought of that raft baby and wondered if it were alive. But such thoughts were only in the moments when his bruised mind could not steady itself on what had happened to him. Most of the time he was saying, over and over, just what he was going to do the next morning: he would get into the station; take a cab; drive to the hospital—a dozen times that night his thumb and finger sought his waistcoat pocket for a bill to hasten the driver of that cab! leap out, run up the stairs to the mail-rack beside the receiving clerk's desk, seize Elizabeth's letter—here the pause would come, the moment when his body relaxed, and something seemed to melt within him: suppose the letter was not there? Very well: back to the cab! another tip; hurry! hurry! hurry! His mother's house, the steps, his key in the lock—again and again his fingers closed on the key-ring in his pocket! letters on the hall table awaiting him—her letter. Then again the relaxing shock: suppose it was not there? The thought turned him sick; after the almost physical recoil from it, came brief moments of longing for his mother's tender arms, or the remembrance of that baby on the raft. But almost immediately his mind would return to the treadmill of expectation; get into the station—take a cab—rush—So it went, on and on, until, toward dawn, through sheer exhaustion he slept.

That next day was never very clear in David's memory. Only one fact stood out distinctly in the mists: there was no letter. Afterward, when he tried to recall that time of discovering that she had not written, he was confused by the vision of his mother smiling down at him from the head of the stairs and calling to an unseen maid, "Bring the doctor a cup of coffee, Mary!" He could remember that he stood sorting out the letters on the hall table, running them over swiftly, then going through them slowly, one by one, scanning each address, each post-mark; then, with shaking hands, shuffling and sorting them like a pack of cards, and going through them again. She had not written. He could remember that he heard the blood beating in his ears, and at the same time his mother's voice: "Bring the doctor a cup of coffee." . . . She had not written.