Robert Morton followed her to the door and stood watching as she hurried along the copper-matted path of the woods sunflecked and mottled with shadow.
What a sweet miracle it was, he mused! She was his now before all the world, thanks to Willie's skilful pilotage. Where was the little old man—that dreamer of dreams, who with Midas-like touch left upon everything with which he came in contact the golden impress of his heart? He must seek him out and thank him for his aid.
Perhaps the thought carried with it a potent charm of magic, for no sooner had Robert Morton framed it than the inventor himself appeared on the threshold.
"Well, another of my ships has made port!" cried he triumphantly.
His delicate face was illumined with a joy so transcendent that one might easily have believed that it was to him love's touchstone had been given.
"I never can thank you, Willie!" burst out the young man.
"Be good to Delight, my boy, an' make her happy; that's all the thanks I want," was the grave response.
A pause fell between them. Perhaps Willie was thinking of the days that must inevitably come when the girl he had loved since childhood would be far away. How dull the gray house would be when she no longer flitted in and out its doors! Try as he would to banish the selfish reflection, it returned persistently. Then suddenly something quite outside himself put the reverie to rout.
It was the querulous voice of Janoah Eldridge.
"I was right about them Galbraiths," he cried exultantly, standing in the doorway and hurling the words into the room where the two men lingered. "'Twas exactly as I said. Lyman Bearse's boy went up on the Boston train one afternoon in front of Snelling an' that other feller who was here, an' he heard every word they uttered. He said they talked the whole way about gettin' a patent out on your invention. Now, Willie Spence, was I right or warn't I? Mebbe you'll believe me the next time I warn you against folks."