Mr. Gale lifted haggard eyes.
"Then it's bumming around, regular tramps, and to the bad generally." Belding spread wide his big arms, and when one of them dropped round Nell, who sat beside him, she squeezed his hand tight. "Sure, it's the regular thing," he concluded, cheerfully.
He rather felt a little glee at Mr. Gale's distress, and Mrs. Gale's crushed I-told-you-so woe in no wise bothered him; but the look in the big, dark eyes of Dick's sister was too much for Belding.
He choked off his characteristic oath when excited and blurted out, "Say, but Dick Gale never went to the bad!... Listen!"
Belding had scarcely started Dick Gale's story when he perceived that never in his life had he such an absorbed and breathless audience. Presently they were awed, and at the conclusion of that story they sat white-faced, still, amazed beyond speech. Dick Gale's advent in Casita, his rescue of Mercedes, his life as a border ranger certainly lost no picturesque or daring or even noble detail in Belding's telling. He kept back nothing but the present doubt of Dick's safety.
Dick's sister was the first of the three to recover herself.
"Oh, father!" she cried; and there was a glorious light in her eyes. "Deep down in my heart I knew Dick was a man!"
Mr. Gale rose unsteadily from his chair. His frailty was now painfully manifest.
"Mr. Belding, do you mean my son—Richard Gale—has done all that you told us?" he asked, incredulously.
"I sure do," replied Belding, with hearty good will.