“The first thing I noticed,” Garry went on, “was the way Tom stared when he first saw him that night up in the woods. He was sure he’d seen him before. I didn’t think much about that though till afterwards when other little things set me thinking and then I remembered about it and I began to put two and two together. When Jeffrey told me where he belonged I remembered about the old gentleman in Vale Centre who came home one time with a young fellow he called his nephew and how all the people in the village wondered who the nephew was. They didn’t live near enough for me to know much about them and I don’t know as I ever saw Jeffrey until that night up on the mountain.
“Well, it was while we were bringing Mr. Waring down through the woods on the stretcher that Tom said something about the Stantons—he just mentioned the name sort of off-hand, and I noticed that Jeffrey stared at him and looked sort of worried or puzzled, kind of, and then started in again chattering in that way of his.
“Then it came jumping into my head all of a sudden that he was trying to think of something and couldn’t. And I was wondering if Tom really ever had seen him before, when I just happened to think—the idea came to me, sort of—that maybe it was his sister that Tom had seen. Of course, I didn’t think so but the idea wouldn’t go away and I decided that anyway I’d keep Jeffrey near me if I could and not let him get mixed up with the crowd where he’d be all the time getting excited, and see if I couldn’t find out something about him. And even as it was, that was some tall job, believe me.”
“You certainly kept by yourselves,” some one said.
“I knew the time was short and I wanted to see if maybe he wouldn’t get better by just being quiet. I knew a person could get to be—sort of—flighty, like, from an accident or something like that, and lose his memory, and be like a kid, and that sometimes, if he lives quiet and don’t get excited or see many people, he’ll begin to remember things——”
“Garry, we’ve got to hand it to you,” said Roy, earnestly. “You’ve spent your whole vacation buried alive.”
“Even still I didn’t exactly think he was Harry Stanton,” Garry went on, “but after, a while, just for experiment, kind of, I began springing words on him that I thought he might remember. I sprung Stanton and Nyack but there wasn’t any come-back until one day—it was the day Arnold dropped in to see me—I sprung the word Nymph as a good name for a boat and that seemed to kind of hit him. He just stared and stared and stared. After that I decided to take him down to Catskill Landing to look at that sumptuous yacht of his and then to show him the Good Turn. I knew that sometimes when a person sees the thing that caused his trouble or goes back to the same place, maybe, or something of that sort, his memory comes back to him all of a sudden and he wakes up as if he’d been dreaming, as you might say. There’s a long name they have for it, but I can’t seem to remember it. Anyway, it’s a blamed funny thing, but it’s true. If you want to know what happened when we trespassed on the Good Turn, you’d better let him tell you, hey, Jeff?”
The boy who had been the subject of Garry’s simple narrative was smiling, as every one turned toward him, and though the familiar trace of childishness was not entirely gone from his smile, there was a suggestion of mental poise or self-possession, even in the face of this public stare, which had not been there before. And though one or two noticed (for they were scouts and noticed things) that he twirled one finger nervously with his other hand, he at least did not begin to chatter with that distressing agitation and irrational boastfulness which the camp had known so well.
He had not changed his habit and demeanor as a lightning change performer will doff his costume, but there was a difference and everyone could see it. The woods and the quiet water and the sympathetic surroundings were to do much for him yet and it would be a long journey back to mental keenness and physical vigor. But he was different, and it seemed all very wonderful. It was a knockout blow to Doc Carson, proficient though he was in his chosen specialty, for not a word about this kind of business had he ever seen in his study of First-Aid.
“Hey, Stanton, you old Jekyll and Hyde,” Garry repeated, cheerily; “you came near getting me in Dutch with this bunch. Tell them about the Nymph.”