"
Hours later Caleb acted upon her suggestion. Every characteristic
which Sarah had mentioned he found and noted in that half-lighted
moment or two while he stood at the bedside.
And he noted more than just that. Sarah's old canvas hunting coat was
folded into a small bundle and lay, guarded by one outflung,
loose-fingered brown hand, beside the sleeping boy's face on the pillow.
Caleb went to bed with a half dozen wild notions whirling in his head,
and a strange something tugging at his heart.
CHAPTER III
THREE QUARTERS AND SIX EIGHTHS
Saturday morning dawned as hot and dry and windless as had been the
other days of the week which had preceded it. Caleb Hunter, rising
from an uneasy night, blamed his sleeplessness upon the weather. It
was fully an hour before his usual, not-too-early hour of rising, when
he slowly descended the wide stairway; and yet he was but little
surprised to find the boy already there before him, seated upon the top
step of the verandah, when he strolled outside.
The little stranger with the grave voice, who had introduced himself as
Stephen O'Mara, had not heard Caleb's step and the latter stood for a
time in the doorway, contemplating the small, square-set shoulders in
the canvas coat which had been his sister Sarah's, and the small,
shapely head above them.
Throughout the night while he lay awake pondering the fantastic
possibilities which the boy's story had stirred him into half
believing, Caleb had had gradually lengthening moments of doubt in
which he admitted to himself that his sister was right in her chafing
analysis of him, her brother.
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