GOOD SLAP!"

The Angel stood glaring at him. One second Freckles lay paralyzed and
dumb with astonishment. The next the Irish in his soul arose above
everything. A laugh burst from him. The terrified Angel caught him in
her arms and tried to stifle the sound. She implored and commanded. When
he was too worn to utter another sound, his eyes laughed silently.

After a long time, when he was quiet and rested, the Angel commenced
talking to him gently, and this time her big eyes, humid with tenderness
and mellow with happiness, seemed as if they could not leave his face.

"Dear Freckles," she was saying, "across your knees there is the face of
the mother who went into the fire for you, and I know the name--old and
full of honor--to which you were born. Dear heart, which will you have
first?"

Freckles was very tired; the big drops of perspiration ran together on
his temples; but the watching Angel caught the words his lips formed,
"Me mother!"

She lifted the lovely pictured face and set it in the nook of his arm.
Freckles caught her hand and drew her beside him, and together they
gazed at the picture while the tears slid over their cheeks.

"Me mother! Oh, me mother! Can you ever be forgiving me? Oh, me
beautiful little mother!" chanted Freckles over and over in exalted
wonder, until he was so completely exhausted that his lips refused to
form the question in his weary eyes.

"Wait!" cried the Angel with inborn refinement, for she could no more
answer that question than he could ask. "Wait, I will write it!"

She hurried to the table, caught up the nurse's pencil, and on the back
of a prescription tablet scrawled it: "Terence Maxwell O'More, Dunderry
House, County Clare, Ireland."

Before she had finished came Freckles' voice: "Angel, are you hurrying?"

"Yes," said the Angel; "I am. But there is a good deal of it. I have to
put in your house and country, so that you will feel located."

"Me house?" marveled Freckles.

"Of course," said the Angel. "Your uncle says your grandmother left your
father her dower house and estate, because she knew his father would cut
him off. You get that, and all your share of your grandfather's property
besides. It is all set off for you and waiting. Lord O'More told me so.
I suspect you are richer than McLean, Freckles."

She closed his fingers over the slip and straightened his hair.

"Now you are all right, dear Limberlost guard," she said. "You go to
sleep and don't think