Before daylight on the night of the Inger’s departure, his father had been roused by Bunchy and two of his friends arriving at the hut. Questioned, the old man had had nothing to tell them. His son had gone to the wedding, that was all he knew. Still, his son was unmistakably missing now, and the absence was the clue on which Bunchy had worked all that day. On the morning of the second day, the messenger had come riding over from the ticket agent beyond Whiteface, and had spread in the bars of Inch the tale of the manner of the Inger’s purchase of two tickets to Chicago. As soon as he heard, the old man, having done his son’s bidding at the bank in Inch, had sought out Bunchy, found him leaving on the Limited, and abruptly resolved to travel with him—“So’s to keep my eye on the bugger,” he said. Here he began to retell it all, and to fit, in wrong places, some account of Bunchy’s doings on the journey and of their half day in Chicago. “He’s a bugger—a bad bugger,” the old man repeated fretfully, “only he’s worse’n that, if I could think....”
By all this and by the nerveless movements and the obvious weakness of his father, a fact gradually returned to the Inger:
“Dad!” he cried. “You said you was sick the night you come to the hut. Ain’t that over?”
It appeared that it was by no means “over”—the sickness of which the older man had complained. To the Inger, sickness meant so little in experience that he was unable to take it seriously in any one else. In all these days, he had not once recalled his father’s mention that he was ailing. He was swept by his compunction. Against the old man’s protest, he called a doctor. And the doctor, after his examination, left what he could, and, when the Inger emphatically refused to have a nurse sent, unexpectedly announced that he would look in again toward morning.
When, almost at once, his father had fallen asleep in the little single bed, the Inger turned out the light, drew the shade to the top of the window, and stood staring across the roofs. Against the sky rose the dome of the Capitol, pricked with a thousand lights.
He breathed deep, and abruptly he understood that here in the darkness, alone, he was feeling an elation which was to him unaccountable. Something tremendous seemed to have happened to him. What was it? He did not know. His father was ill—Bunchy was here—Lory Moor was in trouble—he was haunted by the image of that mad old man. And yet his whole being was pervaded by a sense of lightness, of gratification, of sheer energy such as he never had known. For an hour he stood there, and he could not have told what he had been thinking. Only something unspeakable seemed to have occurred, which kept him from sleep.
He did sleep at last, rolled in his blanket and lying on the floor. But he was awake, and had ministered to his father, and below, on the doorstep, stood stretching prodigiously, when in the crisp morning, the doctor came back. As the doctor left, he drew the Inger down the stairs again. They spoke together in the little passage, in the light that came through the orange glass over the door. His father had, by a miracle, lived to reach him. Any hour of that day might be his last hour.
The Inger went back upstairs, and stared at his father. Impossible. He had been living for so long. There was so much that he himself remembered having been told of this man’s youth and young manhood. It was incredible that now he should die, and no one would remember these things any more.... There had been one story about his buying an eagle somewhere, and setting it free. The Inger had always liked to hear that story. Now it would close over, and no one else would know. This alone seemed intolerable.