Miles knew Roy at once.

"This is Miles, isn't it?" said Roy in his pleasant way, and he put out his hand.

"Yes, but wait a minute."

Miles hurried to the pump near the kitchen door. He gave his hands a douse of water, dried them quickly on a roller towel in the woodshed, and then came back to greet the brother of the boy of whom he was so fond.

"You got the telegram all right then?" he said. "Rex was so weak when he told me where to send it, I wasn't sure I'd get it quite right."

"I want to thank you for all you did for him," went on Roy. "He's told me about it, except the details. He said you'd do that-- about what happened to him after he got out of the train. But don't let me keep you from your dinner."

"I'd rather talk to you than eat," said Miles frankly.

Mrs. Raynor appeared at this moment and compromised matters by bringing Miles' dinner to him out on the side porch. Roy sat by and listened to the recital, most modestly given, of the facts with which the reader is already acquainted.

It was time for Miles to return to his work when it was finished, and Florence came to summon Roy to their own dinner.

"Isn't he queer?" she said, referring to Miles. "He seems so quiet and talks so well for a man who was-- well, a tramp. I don't know what else you could call him. You ought to have seen the clothes he had on when he first came. Mamma made him burn them."

"He looks as if he might have an interesting story to tell," commented Roy.

"We'll get him to tell it to-night if your brother is well enough," said Mrs. Raynor. "He promised that we should hear it as soon as Rex was able to listen too."

Roy took Rex's dinner up to him, and the twins had an hour to themselves, during which Rex went more into detail concerning his experiences with Harrington and his crowd. They compared notes on Harry Atkins, and then fell to talking of Miles Harding.

"He's something more than a common tramp," Rex insisted. "He can read a little and write some. Isn't it funny how much he thinks of me, when I haven't done a thing for him? Mrs. Raynor lets him come up and sit with me every evening when his work is done. Of course I didn't know this till yesterday, when I came to my senses."

After the doctor's visit about three, Rex went to sleep and Roy played a game of tennis with Florence.

"I don't want to seem glad that your brother is sick," she said, "but it's awfully nice to have company. I get so lonely when Bert is away."

That evening they all assembled in Rex's room-- Mrs. Raynor was a widow, so the family at home consisted only of herself and Florence-- and Miles, seated at the foot of the bed, told the story of his life.

"I don't know where I was born," he began. "The first thing I can remember is living in a tenement house in New York, where I had to sleep three in a bed with the two Morrisey boys. Mr. Morrisey was a truckman, and there was five children of them, and I made six. I always thought I was a Morrisey, too, till one day Jimmy, he got mad at me, and told me I needn't talk so big because I was only living on charity.

"I went to his mother and asked her about it, and she told me that it was true, that I wasn't really her child, but that she thought as much of me as if I was, and that there wasn't any charity about it. But I wanted to know all about myself, and at last she said that I'd been given to Mr. Morrisey when I was a wee baby by a friend of his who couldn't afford to keep me and who made him vow that he'd never tell where I came from.

"Jimmy only found it out by accident one night, listening to his father and mother talking when they thought he was asleep. She said I wasn't to feel bad about it; because they thought everything of me.

"But I did feel bad about it. It seemed too hard when the Morriseys had all they could do to get along they should have one more mouth-- and that not a Morrisey one-- to feed.

"I studied as hard as I could at school, so as to try and get through sooner and go to work and begin to pay them back, b............