Of course this was somewhat old-fashioned, because a doctor would have
set the limb in a plaster cast; but Phil's way promised to answer for
all practical purposes.

The man had improved remarkably. He was even cheerful, though at times
Phil had seen him shake his head, and could hear him sigh. This was
always while he was watching Mazie; and it did not require much to tell
the boy that whatever was upon the man's troubled conscience concerned
his child.

"It's pretty hard to say, Ethan," he told the other; "I can't make up my
mind that's he's any sort of a scamp. His actions tell us that, you
know."

"And it's hard for me to believe that any man who loves a child as he
does that one of his, can be a bad man," Ethan declared, emphatically.

"Yet you saw how he turned red in the face when I handed him the
telegram, and explained how we found it caught under the bow seat of his
birch-bark canoe," continued Phil, looking troubled.

"What was it he mumbled at the time; I didn't quite get it?" Ethan
asked.

"He admitted," the other explained, "that the message had come to him.
He also said that was not his real name, but one assumed for a purpose,
of which he was now heartily ashamed."

"That sounds queer, don't you think, Phil?"

"Why, no, I can't say that I do," Ethan was told. "Any of us might do
something on the spur of the moment that we found reason to feel sorry
for afterwards. Only the other day I bitterly repented of insulting that
noble old bull moose by daring to snap my camera at him point-blank,
didn't I? He made it pretty warm for me, I tell you."

"But this mysterious man must have done something dreadful, to have him
say he was so repentant!" persisted Ethan.

"You're only jumping at conclusions," he was told, bluntly. "I heard him
say at the time he was lying there in the pine woods and suffering, that
he realized he had done somebody a great wrong, and that if he lived he
meant to right it. Now, according to my notion, that was a fine thing
for him to say."

"Mebbe so," remarked Ethan. "I've heard my father say that the best men
are those who've been through the fire, done some wrong, and repented,
so that they think they must spend the rest of their lives making good.
And between us I kind of fancy Mazie's daddy. He seems to be a pretty
nice man."

"Mazie evidently thinks there isn't another like him in the whole
world," Phil told him; "look at her now as she sits there holding his
hand.