heart-rending cry! How cruelly the words had tortured him! And here,
they were repeated twenty years on--for the identification of the son
by the friend!

That afternoon Colonel Decies dispatched a cablegram addressed to a
Miss Gavestone, Monksmead, Southshire, England, and containing the
words, "Have found him, Kot Ghazi, bad accident, doing well, Decies,"
and by the next mail Lucille, with Aunt Yvette and a maid, left Port
Said, having travelled overland to Brindisi and taken passage to Egypt
by the _Osiris_ to overtake the liner that had left Tilbury several
days before the cable reached Monksmead. And in Lucille's largest
trunk was an article the like of which is rarely to be found in the
baggage of a young lady--nothing more nor less than an ancient rapier
of Italian pattern!...

To Lucille, who knew her lover so well, it seemed that the sight and
feel of the worshipped Sword of his Ancestors must bring him comfort,
self-respect, memories, thoughts of the joint youth and happiness of
himself and her.

She knew what the Sword had been to him, how he had felt a different
person when he held its inspiring hilt, how it had moved him to the
telling of his wondrous dream and stories of its stirring past, how he
had revered and loved it ...surely it must do him good to have it? If
he were stretched upon a bed of sickness, and it were hung where he
could see it, it _must_ help him. It would bring diversion of thought,
cheer him, suggest bright memories--perhaps give him brave dreams
that would usurp the place of bad ones.

If he were well or convalescent it might be even more needful as a