It was a tense moment, fraught with misgivings and incredible gay expectancy; his own nervous demeanor rather than his words must mean something. Then the young doctor breezed in, but he was himself nervous and self-conscious. He went straight over to Wilfred. Arden was sitting now upon the bed near her brother. Tom was striding the floor, his face wreathed in smiles. So Mrs. Cowell saw her three children grouped together and there was no mistaking their resemblance to each other. She arose nervously, stared for just a moment in speechless incredulity. Then Rosleigh Cowell was in her arms. Laughingly he tried to submit to her clinging embrace the while Arden held one of his hands and Wilfred the other. It was an affecting scene.
Tom Slade stood apart gazing with brimming, joyous eyes at the picture of which he had been the artist. He had performed his great exploit and now he seemed on the point of tiptoeing out of the room when Wilfred caught him in the act.
“This is just a family party,” said Tom.
“You thought you could sneak away, didn’t you?” said Wilfred.
“I think you’re one of our little family party,” Arden said prettily.
“I was just going to bang around and see if I can find any more Cowells,” Tom said. “What do you think of me as a stalker and trailer?”
“Oh, just to think,” said Mrs. Cowell, gazing still with incredulity and yet with weeping tenderness at the son whom she had not seen since childhood, “just to think that Wilfred saved his life and then Tom——”
“He hasn’t told us yet,” said Arden.
So then Tom and Rosleigh together pieced out for them the tale which ended in this happy climax. Mrs. Cowell clung to her son as if she feared he might run away, kissing him at intervals during the much interrupted narrative, as if to assure herself of his reality.
It was a strange story, how a small, bewildered child, deserted by a band of gypsies near the little village of Shady Vale across the mountain had wandered onto the premises of “Auntie Sally,” as the village knew her twenty years ago. That was a lucky trespass. For Auntie Sally was eccentric and kindly and lived alone.
After first trying to shoo the little boy away with her kitchen apron and a churn stick, she had weakened so far as to tell him that he had a very dirty face, which she proceeded to wash with disapproving vigor. The poor little boy swayed like a reed beneath her vigorous assaults until his face was as shiny as one of Auntie Sally’s milk pans. That was the first thing she did for him—to wash his face. Then she gave him a piece of mince pie and put him to bed.
Aunt Sally Loquez did not make extensive investigations to discover the identity of her guest. She did not go out much and never saw the newspapers. She evidently believed in the good precept that Wilfred had uttered in the time of his great trial, that findings is keepings. She kept the little stranger and became his “granny” and brought him up. She had a mania for washing his face, but otherwise his was a happy childhood.
Auntie Sally had money and when her adopted grandson was old enough she gave him his wish and sent him to college to be a doctor. When he emerged from college he returned to Shady Vale to spend the summer at the little old-fashioned home of his benefactress. And it was then that he heard of the position which was open for a young doctor in the big boys’ camp over the mountain. Twice a week, sometimes oftener, young Doc Loquez went over to see his “granny.” He was unfailing in his attentions to the sturdy, queer old woman, who had given him a home and later a start in life. Gay, buoyant, immensely liked, he never for a moment forgot that little home of his happy boyhood in the village across the frowning mountain.
Then came the first of August, that day forever memorable in the annals of Temple Camp. In the storm and gloom of that afternoon a ’phone message came to him that the stout heart of old Auntie Sally had given away and that she would have none to attend her but the only doctor in the world. That was when the fine young fellow whose face she had so mercilessly scrubbed, went down to the lake and all unheedful of his peril started across the angry water in the camp launch. He was on his way back when the launch, careering at the mercy of the wind, struck the rocks broadside and sank with a great tear in her cedar planking.
You know the rest; how these brothers who had never before seen each other met in storm and darkness in the middle of Black Lake, both stricken, and how Wanderin............