FOUND AT LAST
“Excuse me,” began Roy, leaning over the gate and taking off his broad
brimmed straw hat, “do you know a boy named Rex Pell?”
He had decided that this would be the shortest way of getting at
things.
The woman looked up quickly, resting her chin on the top of her broom
handle.
“Do you think I look as if I knew much about boys?” she replied. “Well,
I don’t and I don’t want to.”
“Excuse me,” said Roy, and he hurried on, glad to get away.
The next house was a larger one. There was a good deal of piazza around
it and some pretensions were made at keeping the lawn in good
condition.
Roy’s knock at the door was answered so promptly that he was fain to
believe that some one must have been peeping through the shutters
watching his approach.
A tall woman with light hair received him very effusively.
“I’ve been expecting you,” she said, with an expansive smile. “I
thought you’d come on that train.”
“This must be the place,” thought Roy. “She knows Rex sent the dispatch
and thought some of us would come on.”
“I suppose you’d like to go straight up stairs?” she continued, when
she had taken his hat and hung it on the stand in the hall.
“Yes, I would,” and Roy’s heart sank.
Rex must be sick, he decided, and not able to leave his bed. He
followed the light haired woman to the floor above, where she threw
open the door of a room with a sort of flourish.
Roy halted on the threshold. There was a double bed inside, but nobody
on it nor was anybody to be seen in the apartment.
“Where is my brother?” he asked.
“Your brother?” exclaimed the woman. “I did not understand that there
were two of you. Your father’s letter mentioned only one son. Wait, I
will get—”
“No, there must be some mistake,” Roy interposed. “I thought my
brother, Rex Pell, might be here.”
“What, you are not Eric Levens, then?”
“No, indeed, and don’t you know anything about my brother? I am so
sorry.”
“I thought you were the young gentleman I expected who was to look at
this room to see whether he liked it well enough to stay while his
father went to Europe. But why are you sorry that I do not know
anything about your brother? Have you lost him?”
“In a sort of a way, yes,” and Roy told his story, or as much of it as
he could, without bringing in the fact of Rex’s having run away from
home.
“Oh, I guess I can help you,” exclaimed the woman, when he had
finished. “Maybe he is the young fellow who is staying at the Raynors’.
I heard about it last Sunday at church.”
“About _it?_ About what?”
Roy’s face grew pale. The woman looked a little uncomfortable.
“Don’t be too anxious,” she replied. “He must be better now if he could
send a message. But he’s had the intermittent fever. He was found on
the piazza of the house one rainy evening about ten days ago by
Florence Raynor. A trampish looking young fellow had carried him in out
of the wet, and they say he’s been devoted to him ever since.”
“Where do the Raynors live?” asked Roy, already impatient to be off.
“Come here to the window and I can show you the house. It is clear at
the end of this street beyond all the others. You can just see the
chimneys above the trees.”
Roy was soon hurrying away in the direction pointed out.
Although he feared that Rex might have been ill, the certainty of it
made his heart very sore for his brother.
“Sick among strangers!” was his thought. “I wish mother had come with
me.”
A young girl was reading on the piazza when he opened the gate and
walked up the path between the box hedges.
“Is my brother Rex here?” he said, pausing at the foot of the steps,
his hat in his hand.
She had raised her head as the gate latch clicked, and now their eyes
met. Even in that moment Roy noted how very pretty she was.
“You are the Roy that he sent the telegram to?” she exclaimed. Then
paused suddenly, and blushed.
“Yes, I’m Roy, and I’ve had a hard time to find him. How is he?”
“He’s better. He was asleep just now. If you will come in I will call
mother.”
“Rex has certainly fallen into good hands,” thought Roy when he was
left alone.
Mrs. Raynor came out in a moment and greeted Roy most cordially.
“I’m glad you came,” she said. “It will do your brother good to see
you,”
“You’ve been very, very kind to him,” answered Roy.
“No; it wasn’t any trouble, because we all took to him so. It was a
pleasure to do for him.”
“But why didn’t he let us know before where he was?” asked Roy.
“Bless you, he only knew himself yesterday. He’s had a hard tug of it,
and not a scrap or a card could we find about him, only the letters R.
B. P. P, on his linen.”
“Then he’s been out of his head?”
“Yes; and you must be prepared to find him greatly changed. But he’ll
come around again all right, the doctor says. I’ll go up now and see if
he is awake and call you.”
The summons to ascend came a few minutes later, and presently Roy found
himself standing by his brother’s bedside. Mrs. Raynor considerately
withdrew and left the two together, warning them that she should be
back in ten minutes to prevent her patient from becoming unduly
excited.
Rex had changed. There was no longer any plumpness in his cheeks, and
his face was very white. But so were his teeth, and his eyes were as
lustrous as ever.
“Roy!” He uttered the one word in a weak voice, and held tightly in
both of his the hands that his brother extended to him.
A moment of the precious ten was lost to silence as the two looked at
each other, but in that look was that which hours of speech could not
have expressed. Roy read in it true repentance, a pleading for
forgiveness, and Rex saw that there was no chiding for him from those
at home, only love and pity.
“Do you know all, Roy; the very worst?” Rex then whispered.
“Don’t think of that now, Reggie. It is all right. I want to talk about
yourself—your sickness.”
“But I must think of it. I have been thinking of it ever since I came
to my senses yesterday. Did you know that I told you lies, that I acted
them, that I took the money I had been saving up for mother’s present
to pay the expenses of this wretched trip?”
“But you didn’t go all the way, Reggie. I found that out. You turned
back. What happened to you then?”
Rex told the terrible tale of the robbery, of the awful night he had
passed riding back and forth across the river, and had got as far as
his falling asleep on the train when Mrs. Raynor appeared and smilingly
announced that time was up.
“Miles will tell you the rest, Roy,” said Rex. “He’s the best fellow. I
don’t know what would have become of me if it hadn’t been for him. And
Mrs. Raynor, too. When I get well they must all come to Philadelphia
and we’ll give them the very best time.”
There was a touch of his old self in the heartiness with which he
uttered these words. Roy’s coming and comforting words had lifted a
heavy burden from his heart.
They left him to try to get to sleep again. Roy went down stairs with
Mrs. Raynor.
“I ought to go home at once and tell my mother about Rex,” he said.
“Why not send a message and stay with him?” suggested the other. “We
should be very glad to have you. There is plenty of room in the house.
Or send word for your mother to come on. I know she must be anxious to
see her son.”
Roy hesitated. He scarcely knew what to do. Then he remembered Sydney’s
absence and reflected that the girls could not very well be left alone.
He decided to stay himself till Monday, and to send word that Rex was
all right now.
He hurried off to the station to write his dispatch and came back as
quickly to the Raynors’. He recollected that he had not yet seen the
Miles of whom Rex spoke, the fellow who could tell him the continuation
of his brother’s adventures.
He asked Florence, whom he found on the lawn, where he could find
Miles.
“He’s out in the field now,” she replied, “digging potatoes. But it’s
almost twelve. He’ll be in then for his dinner. He just adores that
brother of yours.”
“But who is he?” Roy persisted.
“Well, he hasn’t told us his story yet. We took him on trust, and he’s
turned out all right so far. But there he comes now.”
“Excuse me,” said Roy. “I’ll go and see him.” And he hurried off around
the corner of the house.
The next minute he stood face to face with the youth who is destined to
play a highly important part in the remainder of this tale.