It had never occurred to Dick to doubt David's story. It did not,
even now. He had accepted it unquestioningly from the first,
supplemented the shadowy childish memories that remained to him with
it, and gradually co-ordinating the two had built out of them his
house of the past.

Thus, the elderly man whom he dimly remembered was not only his
father; he was David's brother. And he had died. It was the shock
of that death, according to David, that had sent him into the
mountains, where David had followed and nursed him back to health.

It was quite simple, and even explicable by the new psychology.
Not that he had worried about the new psychology in those early days.
He had been profoundly lethargic, passive and incurious. It had
been too much trouble even to think.

True, he had brought over from those lost years certain instincts
and a few mental pictures. He had had a certain impatience at first
over the restrictions of comparative poverty; he had had to learn
the value of money. And the pictures he retained had had a certain
opulence which the facts appeared to contradict. Thus he remembered
a large ranch house, and innumerable horses, grazing in meadows or
milling in a corral. But David had warned him early that there was
no estate; that his future depended entirely on his own efforts.

Then the new life had caught and held him. For the first time he
had mothering and love. Lucy was his mother, and David the pattern
to which he meant to conform. He was happy and contented.