in the world could cause him such incredible pain,
but then his head struck heavily against a stone, and he lay quite still
in a little crumpled heap under the old elm which had sheltered his
boyhood.

II

For an instant after he opened his eyes again, all his life after leaving
Woodville seemed to have melted away, for there at the foot of his bed was
the little, many-paned window out of which he had watched the seasons
change all through his boyhood, and close above him hung the familiar
slanting roof of his own little, old room. However, when he stirred, it
was not his mother but a rosy-faced Irish woman who stopped her sewing and
asked him in a thick, sweet brogue if he needed anything. As he stared at
her, recollecting but dimly having seen her glossy brown hair and fair,
matronly face before, she exclaimed: "Ah, I'm Bridget McCartey, you know,
an' you were hurted by the lads throwin' a baseball into your ribs. It's
lyin' here a week sick you've been, and, savin' your pardon, the sooner
you tell me where your folks live the better. They'll be fair wild about
you."

The sick man closed his eyes again. "I have no family at all," he said. It
was the first time in years that the thoroughgoing extent of that fact had
been brought home to him.

His nurse was moved to sympathy over so awful a fate. "Sure an' don't I
know how 'tis. Pat an' I left every one of our kith behind us, mostly,
when we come away, and it's that hungry for thim that I get. I dare say it
ill becomes me to say it, but the first thing I says to myself when I see
you was how like you are to one of my father's brothers in County Kerry.
It's been a real comfort to have you here sick, as though I had some of my
own kin near. _His_ name was Jerry. It's not possible, is't, that the J.
on your handkerchief stands for Jerry, too?"

For the first time since he had left Woodville J.M. disclosed the
grotesque secret of his initials. In the flaccid indifference of
convalescence it flowed from him painlessly. "My name is Jeroboam
Mordecai."

"Exactly to a hair like Uncle Jerry's!" cried Mrs. McCartey, overjoyed by
the coincidence. "Except that his J. stood for Jeremiah and his M. for
Michael. If you will tell me your last name, too, I'll try and lambaste
the children into callin' you proper. Not havin' sorra name to speak of
you by, and hearin' me say to Pat how you favored my father's brother,
haven't they taken to callin' _you_ Uncle Jerry--more s