Stalker made no reply, but the stern, hard expression of his face did not change one iota until he heard a female voice outside asking if he were asleep. Then the features relaxed; the frown passed like a summer cloud before the sun, and, with half-open lips and a look of glad, almost childish expectancy, he gazed at the curtain-door of the tent.
“Mother’s voice!” he murmured, apparently in utter forgetfulness of Tom Brixton’s presence.
Next moment the curtain was raised, and Betty, entering quickly, advanced to the side of the couch. Tom rose, as if about to leave.
“Don’t go, Mr Brixton,” said the girl, “I wish you to hear us.”
“My brother!” she continued, turning to the invalid, and grasping his hand, for the first time, as she sat down beside him.
“If you were not so young I’d swear you were my mother,” exclaimed Stalker, with a slight look of surprise at the changed manner of his nurse. “Ha! I wish that I were indeed your brother.”
“But you are my brother, Edwin Buxley,” cried the girl with intense earnestness, “my dear and only brother, whom God will save through Jesus Christ?”
“What do you mean, Betty?” asked Stalker, with an anxious and puzzled look.
“I mean that I am not Betty Bevan. Paul Bevan has told me so—told me that I am Betty Buxley, and your sister!”
The dying man’s chest heaved with labouring breath, for his wasted strength was scarcely sufficient to bear this shock of surprise.