When Squire Norman had returned to the house with him after the
funeral, he sat in silence holding the boy's hand till he had wept
his heart out. By this time the two were old friends, and the boy
was not afraid or too shy to break down before him. There was
sufficient of the love of the old generation to begin with trust in
the new.

Presently, when the storm was past and Harold had become his own man
again, Norman said:

'And now, Harold, I want you to listen to me. You know, my dear boy,
that I am your father's oldest friend, and right sure I am that he
would approve of what I say. You must come home with me to live. I
know that in his last hours the great concern of your dear father's
heart would have been for the future of his boy. And I know, too,
that it was a comfort to him to feel that you and I are such friends,
and that the son of my dearest old friend would be as a son to me.
We have been friends, you and I, a long time, Harold; and we have
learned to trust, and I hope to love, one another. And you and my
little Stephen are such friends already that your coming into the
house will be a joy to us all. Why, long ago, when first you came,
she said to me the night you went away: "Daddy, wouldn't it be nice
if Harold could come here altogether?"'

And so Harold An Wolf came back with the Squire to Normanstand, and
from that day on became a member of his house, and as a son to him.
Stephen's delight at his coming was of course largely qualified by
her sympathy with his grief; but it would have been hard to give him
more comfort than she did in her own pretty way. Putting her lips to