have a few words with you about--you know what I mean, Jack."

"Has anything happened, Bob?" asked the other, quickly.

"If you mean has the mystery been cleared up, I'm sorry to tell you
no," Big Bob replied. "But there has been a great change in my home
affairs, Jack. It's really wonderful, to me anyhow, because all my
life it seems that my father has held me at arms' lengths. Why, Jack,
what do you think, when I got home tonight, dirty as anything, and
with this bruise on my cheek where I struck the ground that time we
had the big smash, would you believe it, he actually shook my hand
with a vim, and told me he was proud of me. Why, I tell you that was
worth all I did in my humble capacity, to help win the victory, yes, a
dozen times over."

Jack did not laugh, although it seemed very humorous to hear a boy
make such a strange statement as that. Why, most fathers would have
said that much and ten times over; indeed, few could ever have allowed
such a gap of coldness to arise between themselves and their own
children. It was high time Mr. Jeffries awoke to a realization of the
fact that he had a boy of whom any father might well be proud. Yes, he
had shirked his duty as a parent long enough; and Jack was glad to
know the scales were being lifted from his eyes.

To himself Jack was saying that already it seemed as though great good
was coming out of Big Bob's misfortune. What would a dozen lost
letters count in comparison with the knowledge that his father had
begun to know him, and that the gulf hitherto existing between them
was in a fair way of being definitely bridged?