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Oh, I should like to know how I'm ever going to make you understand
how much I love you!"

Pillow and all, she caught him to her breast one long second; then
she was gone.

Freckles lay dazed with astonishment. At last his amazed eyes
searched the room for something approaching the human to which he

could appeal, and falling on his mother's portrait, he set it
before him.

"For the love of life! Me little mother," he panted, "did you
hear that? Did you hear it! Tell me, am I living, or am I dead and

all heaven come true this minute? Did you hear it?"
He shook the frame in his impatience at receiving no answer.

"You are only a pictured face," he said at last, "and of course you
can't talk; but the soul of you must be somewhere, and surely in this

hour you are close enough to be hearing. Tell me, did you hear that?
I can't ever be telling a living soul; but darling little mother,

who gave your life for mine, I can always be talking of it
to you! Every day we'll talk it over and try to understand the

miracle of it. Tell me, are all women like that? Were you like me
Swamp Angel? If you were, then I'm understanding why me father

followed across the ocean and went into the fire."
CHAPTER XX

Wherein Freckles returns to the Limberlost, and Lord O'More Sails
for Ireland Without Him

Freckles' voice ceased, his eyes closed, and his head rolled back
from exhaustion. Later in the day he insisted on seeing Lord and

Lady O'More, but he fainted before the resemblance of another man
to him, and gave all of his friends a terrible fright.

The next morning, the Man of Affairs, with a heart filled with
misgivings, undertook the interview on which Freckles insisted.

His fears were without cause. Freckles was the soul of honor
and simplicity.

"Have they been telling you what's come to me?" he asked without
even waiting for a greeting.

"Yes," said the Angel's father.
"Do you think you have the very worst of it clear to your understanding?"

Under Freckles' earnest eyes the Man of Affairs answered soberly:
"I think I have, Mr. O'More."

That was the first time Freckles heard his name from the lips
of another. One second he lay overcome; the next, tears filled his

eyes, and he reached out his hand. Then the Angel's father understood,
and he clasped that hand and held it in a strong, firm grasp.

"Terence, my boy," he said, "let me do the talking. I came here
with the understanding that you wanted to ask me for my only child.

I should like, at the proper time, to regard her marriage, if she
has found the man she desires to marry, not as losing all I have,

but as gaining a man on whom I can depend to love as a son and to
take charge of my affairs for her when I retire from business.

Bend all of your energies toward rapid recovery, and from this hour
understand that my daughter and my home are yours."

"You're not forgetting this?"
Freckles lifted his right arm.

"Terence, I'm sorrier than I have words to express about that,"
said the Man of Affairs. "It's a damnable pity! But if it's for me

to choose whether I give all I have left in this world to a man
lacking a hand, or to one of these gambling, tippling, immoral

spendthrifts of today, with both hands and feet off their souls,
and a rotten spot in the core, I choose you; and it seems that my

daughter does the same. Put what is left you of that right arm to
the best uses you can in this world, and never again mention or

feel that it is defective so long as you live. Good day, sir!"
"One minute more," said Freckles. "Yesterday the Angel was telling

me that there was money coming to me from two sources. She said
that me grandmother had left me father all of her fortune and her

house, because she knew that his father would be cutting him off,
and also that me uncle had set aside for me what would be me

father's interest in his father's estate.
"Whatever the sum is that me grandmother left me father, because

she loved him and wanted him to be having it, that I'll be taking.
'Twas hers from her father, and she had the right to be giving it

as she chose. Anything from the man that knowingly left me father
and me mother to go cold and hungry, and into the fire in misery,

when just a little would have made life so beautiful to them, and
saved me this crippled body--money that he willed from me when he

knew I was living, of his blood and on charity among strangers, I
don't touch, not if I freeze, starve, and burn too! If there ain't

enough besides that, and I can't be earning enough to fix things
for the Angel----"

"We are not discussing money!" burst in the Man of Affairs.
"We don't want any blood-money! We have all we need without it.

If you don't feel right and easy over it, don't you touch a cent
of any of it."

"It's right I should have what me grandmother intinded for me
father, and I want it," said Freckles, "but I'd die before I'd

touch a cent of me grandfather's money!"
"Now," said the Angel, "we are all going home. We have done all we

can for Freckles. His people are here. He should know them. They are
very anxious to become acquainted with him. We'll resign him to them.

When he is well, why, then he will be perfectly free to go to
Ireland or come to the Limberlost, just as he chooses. We will go

at once."
McLean held out for a week, and then he could endure it no longer.

He was heart hungry for Freckles. Communing with himself in the
long, soundful nights of the swamp, he had learned to his

astonishment that for the past year his heart had been circling the
Limberlost with Freckles. He began to wish that he had not left him.

Perhaps the boy--his boy by first right, after all--was being neglected.
If the Boss had been a nervous old woman, he scarcely could have

imagined more things that might be going wrong.
He started for Chicago, loaded with a big box of goldenrod, asters,

fringed gentians, and crimson leaves, that the Angel carefully had
gathered from Freckles' room, and a little, long slender package.

He traveled with biting, stinging jealousy in his heart. He would
not admit it even to himself, but he was unable to remain longer

away from Freckles and leave him to the care of Lord O'More.
In a few minutes' talk, while McLean awaited admission to Freckles'

room, his lordship had chatted genially of Freckles' rapid
recovery, of his delight that he was unspotted by his early

surroundings, and his desire to visit the Limberlost with Freckles
before they sailed; he expressed the hope that he could prevail

upon the Angel's father to place her in his wife's care and have
her education finished in Paris. He said they were anxious to do

all they could to help bind Freckles' arrangements with the Angel,
as both he and Lady O'More regarded her as the most promising girl

they knew, and one who could be fitted to fill the high position in
which Freckles would place her.

Every word he uttered was pungent with bitterness to McLean. The
swamp had lost its flavor without Freckles; and yet, as Lord O'More

talked, McLean fervently wished himself in the heart of it. As he
entered Freckles' room he almost lost his breath. Everything was changed.

Freckles lay beside a window where he could follow Lake Michigan's
blue until the horizon dipped into it. He could see big soft

clouds, white-capped waves, shimmering sails, and puffing steamers
trailing billowing banners of lavender and gray across the sky.

Gulls and curlews wheeled over the water and dipped their wings in
the foam. The room was filled with every luxury that taste and

money could introduce.
All the tan and sunburn had been washed from Freckles' face in

sweats of agony. It was a smooth, even white, its brown rift
scarcely showing. What the nurses and Lady O'More had done to

Freckles' hair McLean could not guess, but it was the most
beautiful that he ever had seen. Fine as floss, bright in color,

waving and crisp, it fell around the white face.
They had gotten his arms into and his chest covered with a finely

embroidered, pale-blue silk shirt, with soft, white tie at the throat.
Among the many changes that had taken place during his absence,

the fact that Freckles was most attractive and barely escaped
being handsome remained almost unnoticed by the Boss, so great

was his astonishment at seeing both cuffs turned back and the
right arm in view. Freckles was using the maimed arm that

previously he always had hidden.
"Oh Lord, sir, but I'm glad to see you!" cried Freckles, almost

rolling from the bed as he reached toward McLean. "Tell me quick,
is the Angel well and happy? Can me Little Chicken spread six feet

of wing and sail to his mother? How's me new father, the Bird
Woman, Duncans, and Nellie--darling little high-stepping Nelie?

Me Aunt Alice is going to choose the hat just as soon as I'm mended
enough to be going with her. How are all the gang? Have they found

any more good trees? I've been thinking a lot, sir. I believe I can
find others near that last one. Me Aunt Alice thinks maybe I can,

and Uncle Terence says it's likely. Golly, but they're nice,
ilegant people. I tell you I'm proud to be same blood with them!

Come closer, quick! I was going to do this yesterday, and somehow
I just felt that you'd surely be coming today and I waited.

I'm selecting the Angel's ring stone. The ring she ordered for me
is finished and they sent it to keep me company. See? It's an

emerald--just me color, Lord O'More says."
Freckles flourished his hand.

"Ain't that fine? Never took so much comfort with anything in
me life. Every color of the old swamp is in it. I asked the Angel

to have a little shamrock leaf cut on it, so every time I saw it I'd
be thinking of the `love, truth, and valor' of that song she was

teaching me. Ain't that a beautiful song? Some of these days I'm
going to make it echo. I'm a little afraid to be doing it with me

voice yet, but me heart's tuning away on it every blessed hour.
Will you be looking at these now?"

Freckles tilted a tray of unset stones from Peacock's that would
have ransomed several valuable kings. He held them toward McLean,

stirring them with his right arm.
"I tell you I'm glad to see you, sir" he said. "I tried to tell me

uncle what I wanted, but this ain't for him to be mixed up in,
anyway, and I don't think I made it clear to him. I couldn't seem

to say the words I wanted. I can be telling you, sir."
McLean's heart began to thump as a lover's.

"Go on, Freckles," he said assuringly.
"It's this," said Freckles. "I told him that I would pay only three

hundred dollars for the Angel's stone. I'm thinking that with what
he has laid up for me, and the bigness of things that the Angel did

for me, it seems like a stingy little sum to him. I know he thinks
I should be giving much more, but I feel as if I just had to be

buying that stone with money I earned meself; and that is all I
have saved of me wages. I don't mind paying for the muff, or the

drexing table, or Mrs. Duncan's things, from that other money, and
later the Angel can have every last cent of me grandmother's, if

she'll take it; but just now--oh, sir, can't you see that I have to
be buying this stone with what I have in the bank? I'm feeling that

I couldn't do any other way, and don't you think the Angel would
rather have the best stone I can buy with the money I earned meself

than a finer one paid for with other money?"
"In other words, Freckles," said the Boss in a husky voice, "you

don't want to buy the Angel's ring with money. You want to give for
it your first awful fear of the swamp. You want to pay for it with

the loneliness and heart hunger you have suffered there, with last
winter's freezing on the line and this summer's burning in the sun.

You want it to stand to her for every hour in which you risked your
life to fulfill your contract honorably. You want the price of that

stone to be the fears that have chilled your heart--the sweat and
blood of your body."

Freckles' eyes were filled with tears and his face quivering with feeling.
"Dear Mr. McLean," he said, reaching with a caress over the Boss's

black hair and his cheek. "Dear Boss, that's why I've wanted you so.


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