than merely promised.

Garrison ordered the dinner--and his taste was both excellent and
generous.

"Mr. Durgin," he said at last with startling candor, "it looked for a
time as if you yourself were concerned in the death of Mr. Hardy. More
than half the pleasure that Dorothy will experience in the outcome of
to-day's affairs will arise from her knowledge of your innocence."

Foster met his gaze steadily.

"I am sorry for many of the worries I have caused," he said, in a
quiet, unresentful manner, free alike from surprise or anger. "I've
been trying to do better. You knew I'd been away?"

"That was one of the features of the case that looked a little
suspicious," answered Garrison.

"I didn't care to tell where I was going, in case my mission should
fail," the young fellow imparted. "I went after work--good, clean,
well-paying work--and I got it. I can hold up my head at last."

A look of pride had come upon his face, but his lip was trembling.
That the fight he had waged with himself was manly, and worthily won,
to some considerable extent, was a thing that Garrison felt. He had no
intention of preaching and no inclination for the task.

"'Nuff said," he answered. "Shake. Here comes the soup."

They shook hands over the table. No further reference was made to a
personal subject. Some way Garrison felt that a man had come to take
the place of a boy, and while he reflected that the fight was not yet
absolutely finished, and the bitterness of it might remain for some
time yet to come, nevertheless he was thoroughly convinced that through
some great lesson, or some awakening influence, Foster had come to his
manhood and could henceforth be trusted to merit respect and the trust
of all his fellow-beings.

Garrison, alone, at nine o'clock, had an impulse to hasten off to
Branchville. In the brief time of lying unconscious on the floor when
Wicks struck him down, he had felt some strange psychic sense take
possession of his being, long enough for the room that Hardy had
occupied in Hickwood to come into vision, as if through walls made
transparent.

He had merely a dim, fading memory that when he awoke he had spoken to
Dorothy, telling her to help him to go, that the hiding-place of
Hardy's will had been at last revealed. As he thought of it now, on
his way to Dorothy's abiding place, he shook his head in doubt. It was
probably all an idle dream.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE RICHES OF THE WORLD