Aunt Sally Loquez did not make extensive investigations to discover the identity of her guest. She did not go out much and never saw the newspapers. She evidently believed in the good precept that Wilfred had uttered in the time of his great trial, that findings is keepings. She kept the little stranger and became his “granny” and brought him up. She had a mania for washing his face, but otherwise his was a happy childhood.
Auntie Sally had money and when her adopted grandson was old enough she gave him his wish and sent him to college to be a doctor. When he emerged from college he returned to Shady Vale to spend the summer at the little old-fashioned home of his benefactress. And it was then that he heard of the position which was open for a young doctor in the big boys’ camp over the mountain. Twice a week, sometimes oftener, young Doc Loquez went over to see his “granny.” He was unfailing in his attentions to the sturdy, queer old woman, who had given him a home and later a start in life. Gay, buoyant, immensely liked, he never for a moment forgot that little home of his happy boyhood in the village across the frowning mountain.
Then came the first of August, that day forever memorable in the annals of Temple Camp. In the storm and gloom of that afternoon a ’phone message came to him that the stout heart of old Auntie Sally had given away and that she would have none to attend her but the only doctor in the world. That was when the fine young fellow whose face she had so mercilessly scrubbed, went down to the lake and all unheedful of his peril started across the angry water in the camp launch. He was on his way back when the launch, careering at the mercy of the wind, struck the rocks broadside and sank with a great tear in her cedar planking.
You know the rest; how these brothers who had never before seen each other met in storm and darkness in the middle of Black Lake, both stricken, and how Wandering Willie set the camp aghast with his sublime prowess and heroism. New scouts at Temple Camp often wonder why that submerged peril is called Wandering Willie’s Rock. Then at camp-fire some one asks and the whole story is told again, just as I have told it to you.
It was Tom Slade who took the young doctor over to Shady Vale so that he might recover from his own shock in the home where his aged benefactress lay. And then it was that Auntie Sally, thinking she was about to die, told Tom all she knew about the little waif who had wandered onto her grounds, bewildered, and with a dirty face.
She showed Tom (she seemed afraid to talk with Rosleigh about these matters) a little trinket that the lost child had worn around his neck, a thing of no value save that it had the initials R. C. engraved upon it. This little locket she had hidden away, thinking perhaps to lull her own conscience into the belief that there was no means of establishing the identity of the one little blessing which she could not bear the thought of losing.
“I’d’know as I care now,” she said, “if he’s got folks as’ll care for him as I did—if you can find ’em. Leastways what he is I made him. I had him as long as I lived. Long as I ain’t goin’ to be ’bout no more....”
And so Tom with the instinct of the true scout, had made inquiries which had resulted in establishing the identity of the waif.
“And no one could doubt it after seeing you all together,” he said.
“And Auntie Sally?” Arden asked. “Did she——”