Chester went along mechanically. At the Marble Arch Uncle Gilbert was about to hail a bus, when Chester stopped him.
"You'll excuse me, wont you for not returning with you—I—I—"
"But I gave my word to Lucy that I would bring you back."
"Yes; I know, I'll come after a while—but not now—you go on,—I—I—there's your bus now; you had better take it."
Uncle Gilbert, still a little annoyed, climbed on the bus and left his companion looking vacantly at the line of moving busses.
Chester went back into the park. There was room to breathe there and some freedom from fellow beings. He left the beaten paths. Oh, that he could get away from everybody for a time! Old Thunder out among the Rocky Mountains would be an ideal place just now.
The wheels of thought went surely and correctly. There was no slipping of cogs now. The Rev. Thomas Strong was his father.
Every link in the chain of evidence fitted. There was no break. He went over the ground again and again. There came to him now facts and incidents which he had heard from his foster parents, and they all fitted in other facts and strengthened his conclusions. Now he also remembered and understood some of his mother's remarks about ministers. Yes, Thomas Strong was his father! Lucy's father! Why, he and Lucy were brother and sister!
It is quite useless to try to tell all that was in Chester Lawrence's thoughts and heart from then on all that afternoon. He did not know, neither did he care how long he lay on the grass in the park, but there came a time when his solitude became unbearable, so he walked with feverish haste into the crowded streets. The lamps were being lighted when he came to the Thames Embankment, where he watched for a time the black, sluggish water being sucked out to sea by the outgoing tide. Then he walked on. St. Paul loomed high in the murky darkness. He got into the ridiculously narrow streets of Paternoster Row, where he had on his first visit bought a Bible. The evening was far spent and the crowds were thinning when he recognized the Bank of England corner.