"My boy! my boy! Thank God for this, my darling boy!"
Then she kissed him; and she wept.
Out of the mist there came another familiar form. It was his father.
"Bertie! at last! Thank God for this, indeed, my son!"
And he, too, stooped and kissed the lad. And the mother rose to her feet, and became encircled in her husband's arms; and they two rejoiced together over the son who was lost and was found.
He had been ill six weeks. Six weeks delirious with fever; six weeks hovering between life and death; six weeks' sorrow; six weeks' pain. That was the end of his journey.
And it would have had another ending had it not been for the providence of God. He would have journeyed into that strange, unknown country, whose name is Death, but that he was found by the roadside, where he had fallen, and by a friend. It would be unwise to say that that friend was not sent to him direct from God.
Among his father's patients was a certain Mr. Yates. Mr. Yates was a county magistrate, a man of position and of wealth. Under God he owed his life to Dr. Bailey's skill. It was to him reference has been made as having given Bertie half a sovereign once upon a time--half a sovereign which, to Bertie's disgust, he had had to divide with his brothers and sisters.
Mr. Yates had known the youngster well. He was a bachelor, and had allowed the boy to run in and out almost as he pleased. On the eve of starting on a tour to Brittany he had heard that the young gentleman had disappeared from school, no one knew why, no one knew whither. There was a pretty to-do when it was known. It was almost the last straw for Mr. Fletcher, that last straw which, according to the proverb, breaks the camel's back.
In his bewilderment--in the general bewilderment, indeed--Dr. Bailey had not hesitated to lay his son's disappearance at Mr. Fletcher's door. He declared that he was alone to blame, that some act of remissness, some act of even positive cruelty must have goaded the lad into taking such a step.