She laughed softly.
“Rash boy! Was there not need of someone’s preparing your father and mother for so wonderful a home-coming? I found out by judicious inquiry that you had not yet left the city, so I knew, when I took the train, that I had at least a few hours’ start of you.”
“But how—what—how could you, dear? Surely I didn’t tell——”
Again she laughed, but this time she dimpled into a rosy blush.
“When your very disquieting letter came, sir, I remembered something Mr. Martin had once said to me. I went to town, sent for Mr. Martin and insisted upon his telling me all that he knew of—your youth.”
“And that was?”
“That he believed you to be Paul Weston, who had quarreled with his father and run away after apparently killing the poor gentleman. Mr. Martin said that the father did not die, but slowly recovered from his wound and made every possible effort to find his son, even sending Martin himself to seek for him. Once Martin traced the boy to a mining camp, but there he lost the trail and never regained it until he thought he saw Paul Weston’s features in Joseph Westbrook’s face.”
“Ethel, what did Martin first tell you of me that caused you to go to him for aid?”
“He hinted that you were a—ah, don’t make me say it, please!”
The man’s face grew stern.