sidered
unworthy of him.

"Two things," said Raven. "One is to forget every blamed word of the
screed I was jackass enough to send you. The other is to give me your
word you won't mention it, even to me. Oh, there's another thing. Go
home and burn the thing up."

Dick's eyes were all a wild apprehension.

"Oh," said he, "I can't burn it. I haven't got it."

"You haven't it? Who has?"

"Nobody--not yet."

"Oh, then you've destroyed it already."

"No," said Dick miserably. "I've sent it off."

"Who to? Nan?"

"No. Mother."

Raven could hardly believe him. He did not remember any illuminating
confidences from Dick on the subject of mother, but he made no doubt the
boy looked upon her as he did, as a force too eccentrically
irresponsible to be unloosed.

"Well!" he said. The state of things struck him as too bad to be taken
otherwise than calmly. You couldn't spend on it the amount of emotion it
deserved, so you might as well get the credit with yourself and your
antagonist of an attack unexpectedly gentle. "Now, what did you think
you were doing when you sent it off to your mother?"

"Uncle Jack," said Dick, rather awkwardly blundering about his mental
armory for some reasonable defense, "she's your sister."

"Yes," said Raven, "Milly is my sister. What then?"

"Then, why, then," said Dick, "when a thing like this happens to you,
she'd feel it, wouldn't she?"

"You're perfectly sure you know what has happened to me? You trust your
own diagnosis?"

"Of course I trust it," Dick burst forth. "Your letter--why, your letter
isn't normal. Shell shock's a perfectly legitimate thing. You know it
is. You're just the one to be hit. You did perfectly crazy things over
there, entirely beyond any man of your years. And I'm mighty thankful we
can put our finger on it. For if it isn't shell shock, it's something
worse."

"You mean," said Raven, "I've gone off my nut."

Dick did not answer, but there could be no doubt of his own mental
excitement, and he was apprehensive in a measure that moved Raven to an
amused compassion. Raven sat looking at him a long minute. Then he got
up and took his newspaper from the table beside him.

"Come," he said. "We'll go into the library and see if we can get
anywhere."

Dick followed him, and they sat down together by the fire, this after
Raven had moved a third chair into the space between them. He smiled at
himself as he did it. It was the chair Nan had sat in the night bef