From the farther side of the room the sound of a creaking board smote
almost instantly upon their ears.

"Any time that you people want me," suggested Edgarton's icy voice, "I
am standing here--in about the middle of the floor!"

With a jerk of dismay Barton wheeled around to face him. But it was
little Eve Edgarton herself who found her tongue first.

"Oh, Father dear--I have been perfectly wise!" she hastened to assure
him. "Almost at once, Father, I told him that I liked him, so that if
he really were the dreadful kind of young man you were warning me
about, he would eliminate himself from my horizon--immediately--in his
wicked pursuit of--some other lady! Oh, he did run, Father!" she
confessed in the first red blush of her life. "Oh, he did--run,
Father, but it was--almost directly--toward me!"

"Eh?" snapped Edgarton.

Then in a divine effrontery, half impudence and half humility, Barton
stepped out into the middle of the room, and proffered his strong,
firm young hand to the older man.

"You told me," he grinned, "to rummage around until I discovered a
Real Treasure? Well, I didn't have to do it! It was the Treasure, it
seems, who discovered me!"

Then suddenly into his fine young eyes flared up the first glint of
his new-born soul.