And if she does as Mrs. Brown says, 'carries some comfort into the valley of the shadow for him, making his last days bright,' isn't that the very biggest rainbow anybody could make?"

"Ye-es," admitted Richard in a doubtful tone. "Maybe it is if you put it that way."

They walked a few blocks more in silence, then he said:

"I think _Dan_ ought to be an honary member."

It was Georgina's turn to ask why.

"Aw, you know why! Taking the blame on himself the way he did and everything."

"But he made just as bad times for Uncle Darcy and Aunt Elspeth as he made good times for Mr. Potter and Emmett. I don't think he has any right to belong at all."

They argued the question hotly for a few minutes, coming nearer to a quarrel than they had ever been before, and only dropping it as they crossed to a side street which led into the dunes.

"Let's turn here and go home this way," suggested Richard. "Let's go look at the place where we buried the pouch and see if the sand has shifted any."

Nothing was changed, however, except that the holes they had dug were filled to the level now, and the sand stretched an unbroken surface as before the day of their digging.

"Cousin James says that if ever the gold comes to the top we can have it, because he paid the woman. But if it ever does I won't be here to see it. I've got to go home in eight more days."

He stood kicking his toes into the sand as he added dolefully, "Here it is the end of the summer and we've only played at being pirates. We've never gone after the real stuff in dead earnest, one single time."

"I know," admitted Georgina. "First we had to wait so long for your portrait to be finished and then you went off on the yacht, and all in between times things have happened so fast there never was any time. But we found something just as good as pirate stuff--that note in the rifle was worth more to Uncle Darcy than a chest of gold."

"And Captain Kidd was as good as a real pirate," said Richard, brightening at the thought, "for he brought home a bag of real gold, and was the one who started us after the wild-cat woman. I guess Uncle Darcy would rather know what she told him than have a chest of ducats and pearls."

"We can go next summer," suggested Georgina.

"Maybe I won't be here next summer. Dad always wants to try new places on his vacation. He and Aunt Letty like to move. But I'd like to stay here always. I hate to go away until I find out the end of things. I wish I could stay until the letter is found and Dan comes home."

"You may be a grown-up man before either of those things happen,"

remarked Georgina sagely.

"Then I'll know I'll be here to see 'm," was the triumphant answer, "because when I'm a man I'm coming back here to live all the rest of my life. It's the nicest place there is."

"If anything happens sooner I'll write and tell you," promised Georgina.

Something happened the very next morning, however, and Georgina kept part of her promise though not in writing, when she came running up the Green Stairs, excited and eager. Her news was so tremendously important that the words tumbled over each other in her haste to tell it. She could hardly make herself understood. The gist of it was that a long night letter had just arrived from her father, saying that he had landed in San Francisco and was taking the first homeward bound train. He would stop in Washington for a couple of days to attend to some business, and then was coming home for a long visit. And--this was the sentence Georgina saved till last to electrify Richard with:

"_Am bringing Dan with me._"

"He didn't say where he found him or anything else about it," added Georgina, "only 'prepare his family for the surprise.' So Barby went straight down there to Fishburn Court and she's telling Aunt Elspeth and Uncle Darcy now, so they'll have time to get used to the news before he walks in on them."

They sat down on the top step with the dog between them.

"They must know it by this time," remarked Georgina. "Oh, don't you wish you could see what's happening, and how glad everybody is? Uncle Darcy will want to start right out with his bell and ring it till it cracks, telling the whole town."

"But he won't do it," said Richard. "He promised he wouldn't."

"Anyhow till Belle says he can," amended Georgina. "I'm sure she'll say so when 'the call' comes, but n.o.body knows when that will be. It may be soon and it may not be for years."

They sat there on the steps a long time, talking quietly, but with the holiday feeling that one has when waiting for a procession to pa.s.s by.

The very air seemed full of that sense of expectancy, of waiting for something to happen.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

COMINGS AND GOINGS

OUT towards the cranberry bogs went the Towncrier. No halting step this time, no weary droop of shoulders. It would have taken a swift-footed boy to keep pace with him on this errand. He was carrying the news to Belle. What he expected her to say he did not stop to ask himself, nor did he notice in the tumultuous joy which kept his old heart pounding at unwonted speed, that she turned white with the suddenness of his telling, and then a wave of color surged over her face.

Her only answer was to lead him into the room where the old net-mender lay helpless, turning appealing eyes to her as she entered, with the look in them that one sees in the eyes of a grateful dumb animal. His gaze did not reach as far as the Towncrier, who halted on the threshold until Belle joined him there. She led him outside.

"You see for yourself how it is," was all she said. "Do as you think best about it."

Out on the road again the Towncrier stood hesitating, uncertain which course to take. Twice he started in the direction of home, then retraced his steps again to stand considering. Finally he straightened up with a determined air and started briskly down the road which led to the center of the town. Straight to the bank he went, asking for Mr. Gates, and a moment later was admitted into the president's private office.

"And what can I do for you, Uncle Dan'l?" was the cordial greeting.

The old man dropped heavily into the chair set out for him. He was out of breath from his rapid going.

"You can do me one of the biggest favors I ever asked of anybody if you only will. Do you remember a sealed envelope I brought in here the first of the summer and asked you to keep for me till I called for it?"

"Yes, do you want it now?"

"I'm going to show you what's in it."

He had such an air of suppressed excitement as he said it and his breathing was so labored, that Mr. Gates wondered what could have happened to affect him so. When he came back from the vault he carried the envelope which had been left in his charge earlier in the summer.

Uncle Darcy tore it open with fingers that trembled in their eagerness.

"What I'm about to show you is for your eyes alone," he said. He took out a crumpled sheet of paper which had once been torn in two and pasted together again in clumsy fashion. It was the paper which had been wadded up in the rifle, which Belle had seized with hysterical fury, torn in two and flung from her.

"There! Read that!" he commanded.

Mr. Gates knew everybody in town. He had been one of the leading citizens who had subscribed to the monument in Emmett Potter's honor. He could scarcely believe the evidence of his own eyes as he read the confession thrust into his hands, and he had never been more surprised at any tale ever told him than the one Uncle Darcy related now of the way it had been found, and his promise to Belle Triplett.

"I'm not going to make it public while old Potter hangs on," he said in conclusion. "I'll wait till he's past feeling the hurts of earth. But Mr. Gates, I've had word that my Danny's coming home. I can't let the boy come back to dark looks and cold shoulders turned on him everywhere.

I thought if you'd just start the word around that he's all right--that somebody else confessed to what he's accused of--that you'd seen the proof with your own eyes and could vouch for his being all right--if _you'd_ just give him a welcoming hand and show you believed in him it would make all the difference in the world in Danny's home-coming. You needn't mention any names," he pleaded. "I know it'll make a lot of talk and surmising, but that won't hurt anybody. If you could just do that----"

When the old man walked out of the president's office he carried his head as high as if he had been given a kingdom. He had been given what was worth more to him, the hearty handclasp of a man whose "word was as good as a bond," and the promise that Dan should be welcomed back to the town by great and small, as far as was in his power to make that welcome cordial and widespread.

Dan did not wait in Washington while Doctor Huntingdon made his report.

He came on alone, and having missed the boat, took the railroad journey down the Cape. In the early September twilight he stepped off the car, feeling as if he were in a strange dream. But when he turned into one of the back streets leading to his home, it was all so familiar and unchanged that he had the stranger feeling of never having been away. It was the past ten years that seemed a dream.