When finally the two boys moved away the man stood there for some time as though lost in reflection. Then he laughed softly to himself as though he considered that there was a joke on somebody.
It was just then that the kitchen door was flung wide open and a dripping figure of a man came staggering into the room. Hugh instantly guessed who it must be even before he heard one of the children cry out:
“Daddy!”
Immediately the man was passionately kissing the babes of the woods, only refraining from taking them in his arms because of his soaked condition. Hugh saw that Mr. Barger was still a fine-looking man. He also noticed that Mrs. Heffner seemed strangely moved at seeing him, though at the time he did not exactly understand why.
Later on Hugh learned the whole story of how years before Mr. Barger had been courting Sally Slavin, but an unfortunate quarrel had separated them. Both had married and lost their partners. Since the death of Mr. Heffner, the widower had tried to renew his attentions. Though Mrs. Heffner cared for him, she had resolutely declined to encourage him as a suitor on account of his bad habits, which he seemed loth to give up.
The man was trembling like a leaf. Hugh believed he had had a serious shock, and so he was not surprised to hear him say to Mrs. Heffner:
“When I heard about the fire up this way I hurried my team as fast as a whip could make them tear. Leaving the horses on the road I made my way through the fire to where my house had stood. It was a heap of ruins. Money can replace that, but my terrible fear was that my children had perished. Sally, right then and there I got down on my knees and promised Heaven that if only I could find those babes again unharmed, never would a drop of the vile stuff pass my lips again. Sally, I mean to keep that vow as long as I live, you understand?”
Hugh wondered why the widow should blush so, and snatching up the smallest of the waifs press the little one to her heart. He knew all about it later on, and could rejoice in that those motherless babes would no longer lack the care they needed.
“Things seem to be turning out first-class, eh, Hugh?” remarked Billy, as he and the scout master stood watching all this transpiring. “It’s too bad Mr. Barger lost his house, though. Perhaps Mrs. Heffner will shelter the kids till he can put up another one.”
“She’s got plenty of room for them all here in her house,” remarked Hugh, with something so suggestive in his manner that even Billy noticed it and managed to give a guess as to what it meant.