“Don't you know me, Dannie?” wistfully. Dan said nothing, but he extended his hand, and his father's fingers closed about it with a mighty pressure. Then, quite abruptly, Roger Oakley turned and walked over to the window. Once more there was absolute silence in the room, save for the ticking of the clock and the buzzing of a solitary fly high up on the ceiling.
The old convict was the first to break the tense stillness.
“I had about made up my mind I should never see you again, Dannie. When your mother died and you came West it sort of wiped out the little there was between me and the living. In fact, I really didn't know you would care to see me, and when Hart told me you wished me to come to you and had sent the money, I could hardly believe it.”
Here the words failed him utterly. He turned slowly and looked into his son's face long and lovingly. “I've thought of you as a little boy for all these years, Dannie—as no higher than that,” dropping his hand to his hip. “And here you are a man grown. But you got your mother's look—I'd have known you by it among a thousand.”
If Dan had felt any fear of his father it had left him the instant he entered the room. Whatever he might have done, whatever he might have been, there was no question as to the manner of man he had become. He stepped to his son's side and took his hand in one of his own.
“You've made a man of yourself. I can see that. What do you do here for a living?”
Dan laughed, queerly. “I am the general manager of the railroad, father,” nodding towards the station and the yards. “But it's not much to brag about. It's only a one-horse line,” he added.
“No, you don't mean it, Dannie!” And he could see that his father was profoundly impressed. He put up his free hand and gently patted Dan's head as though he were indeed the little boy he remembered.
“Did you have an easy trip West, father?” Oakley asked. “You must be tired.”
“Not a bit, Dannie. It was wonderful. I'd been shut off from it all for more than twenty years, and each mile was taking me nearer you.”