sympathy, of exultant pride, that those who saw it will never
forget.

He stepped lightly forward and took Pen's limp hand in his and pressed
it gently.

"God bless you, my boy!" he said.

No one had ever heard Richard Butler say "God bless you" before, and
no one ever heard him say it again. But when he said it that day to
the dark-haired, white faced, war-worn soldier on the cot in the
hospital near Rouen, the words came straight from a big, and brave,
and tender heart.

He laid Pen's hand slowly back on the counterpane, and then he parted
his white moustache, as he had done that night at the hotel in New
York, and bent over and kissed the boy's forehead. It may have been
the rapture of the kiss that did it; God knows; but at that moment
Pen's tongue was loosened, his lips parted, and he cried out:

"Grandfather!"

With a judgment and a self-denial rare among men, the colonel answered
the boy's greeting with another gentle hand-clasp, and a beneficent
smile, and turned and marched proudly and gratefully back down the
long aisle, stopping here and there to greet some sick soldier who had
given him a friendly look or smile, until he stood in the open doorway
and lifted up his eyes to gaze on the blue line of distant hills
across the Seine.

Later, when the two women came to him, and he went with them to the
_pension_ where they were staying, he explained to them the cause of
his sudden and unheralded appearance. He had received their cablegrams
indeed; but these, instead of serving to allay his anxiety, had made
it only the more acute. To wait now for letters was impossible. His
patience was utterly exhausted. He could no more have remained quietly
at home than he could have shut up his eyes and ears and mouth and
lain quietly down to die. The call that came to him from the bed of
his beloved grandson in France, that sounded in his ears day-time and
night-time as he paced the floors of Bannerhall, was too insistent and
imperious to be resisted. Against the vigorous protests of his niece,
and the timid remonstrances of the few friends who were made aware of
his purpose, he put himself in readiness to sail on the next
out-going steamer that would carry him to his longed-for destination.
And it was only after he had boarded the vessel, and had felt the slow
movement of the ship as she was warped out into the stream, that he
became contented, comfortable, thoroughly at ease in body and mind,
and ready to await pa