Chapter XV

"How did you know I was coming, mother dear?" asked Bill, clinging rather crazily to her as he tried to steady himself.

"I just _felt_ it," she answered, "and once I was so frightened about you, but that passed away."

"What time was it, do you remember?" asked Bill.

"Nine o'clock," she said. "I was waiting for dad to come home from a board meeting."

"Yes, it was just nine," said Bill with a strange look on his face. "I heard you when you spoke to me, mother, and I think it saved my life, and the lives of the other fellows.

"How very strange!" exclaimed Mrs. Sherman. "Who came with you, Bill, and who piloted the plane?"

"I did," replied the boy. "It is a very long story, mother. It was the only way we could come. We _had_ to get here, and a storm had torn all the wires down, and the school was in quarantine, and oh, mother, Lee is _saved_! We have the envelope and the money and it is all going to be right again. They have not taken him away, have they?"

"They were going at noon to-day," answered Mrs. Sherman. "I don't understand at all, Bill. How do you happen to have the money, and all that?"

"I will tell you everything about it presently, mother," said Bill. "I want you to take care of Ernest Breeze, if you will. It is his plane, and he has a broken arm and could not manage to drive, so I had to do it. We flew all night and all day yesterday. Gosh, we are about all in!"

"Don't say another word then!" cried Mrs. Sherman. "Dad isn't out yet, but go get Ernest and I will make some coffee."

Bill took a quick step to her side.

"Coffee for three, please, mother," he said. "There is someone else with us. Frank Anderson is here. He knows something about the theft."

Bill stumbled over his statement. Somehow he hated to tell his mother the bald and awful truth about the boy who had been his friend and hers.

She did not wait for further explanations. Already she was moving rapidly about the tiny kitchen, regulating the roaring fire that had already been started by the janitor, and getting out the canister of coffee.

Bill went back to the airplane. With the aid of the soldiers grouped about, he assisted Ernest over to the quarters, and laid him down on the Major's bed. That gentleman called a lathery greeting from the bathroom where he was shaving.

Ernest was in bad condition. The exposure and the lack of proper care had caused his arm to become terribly inflamed. Mrs. Sherman sent an orderly with a side car over to the Hospital on a hurry call for the doctor.

Then she braced the boy carefully with pillows and covered him with a warm blanket. As soon as it was ready, she brought him a cup of hot coffee and an egg, leaving Bill to care for himself and attend to Frank.

Frank had reached a state where he seemed numb. He was past caring what happened. After a hot drink, however, he braced up a little and prepared to face his ordeal. He did not know what it was to be. For all he knew, he would be taken to Leavenworth. It was agony to think that soon someone would go to his father and mother and tell them that their son on whom they had built such hopes was a thief. He sat silent and downcast and only answered in brief sentences when they addressed him. Of course Major and Mrs. Sherman sensed something dreadful, but they were too wise to press their questions until such time as the boys were fed and rested.

A little color had already crept back in Ernest's face, and Bill was seemingly quite himself.

Then he asked Major Sherman to come into the den, and beckoned Frank to follow. The boy did so with the air of a condemned man.

No one ever knew what went on at that solemn meeting. One hour, two passed and still they sat behind the closed door. Then Major Sherman, with a grave and troubled face, came out, kissed his wife, mounted the horse the orderly had been holding for the past hour, and rode away in the direction of the General's quarters. Bill and Frank remained seated in the den.

Bill, almost as shaken as the culprit, stared out of the window at the quarters across the court. Frank, broken at last, lay on the hard quartermaster cot and shook with dry and racking sobs. Neither boy knew what the outcome would be. It seemed days before the jingle of spurs in the tiny passageway told of the approach of officers, and the door opened to admit General Marcom, his aide, and the Major. Bill rose and stood at attention. Frank too struggled to his feet and stood drooping before his judges.

Once more the story was told, this time Frank adding a broken sentence here and there. He told how Jardin had filled him with the longing for money, and how he had seen the amounts that Jardin spent and wickedly wanted to do likewise. It was on the impulse of the moment that he had taken the envelope filled with bills to pay the Battery. Once in his possession, he was panicstricken. The terror of being found out and punished had driven him onward; that was all.

The General, an old and kindly man, listened with a grave face. He said nothing. Writing an order on a slip of paper, he gave it to his orderly, who galloped off toward Old Post where the jail is situated. In this grim building with its small, grated windows and thick stone walls, Lee was awaiting the hour of his departure for prison. There was much red tape to go through with, but at last the orderly went clattering back to the General with his answer, and close behind him followed an ambulance with Lee and a couple of guards, armed with short carbines and heavy pistols.

As they entered the quarters through the kitchen, Mrs. Sherman placed both hands on Lee's shoulders--shoulders as straight and proud as ever.

"Oh, my dear boy, it is _all right_!" she whispered so the guard would not hear. "It is all right, just as I knew it would be! Be generous, be forgiving, won't you, Lee?"

He smiled down tenderly at the little lady he loved so well and nodded. Then he too passed into the den. For a long while the rumble of the General's deep voice rattled the ornaments on the thin walls, and once more the wild sobbing of a boy was heard. The orderly, standing just outside the door, saluted as the door opened and the General gave him another order to deliver. He came out in person a moment later and dismissed the ambulance and the guards, who went away wondering.

_Lee was a free man._

When the General returned to the den he looked long at Frank, and the Major was inspired to ask permission to leave for a few moments.

"Please call if you want us," he said, and nodding to Lee and Bill to follow, he took them across into his wife's room where they awaited a signal from the General. The wise Major knew that anything the General might say to Frank would be burned forever on his memory. For the General was not only a very great man but a wise one as well, and his words were always words of wisdom, and they were often words of mercy and forgiveness as well.

So the deep old voice rumbled on in the den, with only a brief word in Frank's boyish tones once in awhile.

Presently the door was opened and the General called.

The group advanced.

"Lee," said the General, "have you anything to say to this boy?"

There was a silence. Lee stiffened. Then Mrs. Sherman's tiny hand closed around Lee's great horny fingers and pressed them in the warmest, tenderest clasp. It was very unmilitary, but the General said nothing.

Lee looked down at the little lady and smiled; the first smile for many weeks.

Then he stepped forward a pace, still holding Mrs. Sherman's little hand. Lee raised it, looked at the General, at Mrs. Sherman and last at Frank. With a gesture of reverence he let the little hand drop.

"I forgive you!" he said, "Let's begin new." He held out his hand to the boy, but with a cry Frank turned away.

"Not yet, not yet! I can't take it!" he cried.

"You can if I can," said Lee.

"No, no, I can't; not yet!"

"He is right," said the General. "Let _me_ shake your hand instead, young man, and thank you as one man to another for your forgiveness."

"My car is outside," said Major Sherman meaningly.

"Thank you," said the General. "Anderson, the hardest part is before you. Go home and make a straight confession to your father and mother, and then close this black chapter. Somehow or other I will see that our part of it is taken from the records. It remains for you to turn over a clean page."

Looking at no one, Frank left the room. He entered the Major's car, a lonely, frightened, despairing culprit.

"General," cried Lee suddenly, "if you please, sir, let me go with him! Major Anderson is a hard man, sir. Please let me go!"

"Go!" said the General, and in a moment the boy who had caused such bitter trouble and so much pain and his innocent and forgiving victim were on their way to the Anderson quarters at Aviation Field. The General fussed for a moment, then went outside to the fateful telephone and called Major Anderson.

The others could hear what he said.

"Anderson," he commenced, "this is unofficial. General Marcom speaking. You have a hard and trying interview before you. I want you to meet it with _mercy_, Anderson; _mercy_ rather than justice. Justice has already been done. I could recall something in your past, Anderson, that met with mercy, and which saved your whole career. I ask you to remember this. What? No, I won't explain--the explanation will reach you shortly--You will do as I suggest? Thank you, Anderson. Tell your wife what I have said. Good-morning!"

He hung up the receiver and returned to the house. A round wicker table stood in the center of the living-room near Ernest's couch. A snowy cloth covered it, and it was spread with the most delicious breakfast.

Notwithstanding the General's assurances that he had eaten hours ago he sat down, unable to withstand the delicious whiffs rising from the coffee urn, and the smell of crispy toast browning in the electric toaster.

Grapefruit and eggs and commissary bacon (which is by all odds the best on earth) and that same before-mentioned toast, and coffee, and orange marmalade.

Bill, who had never imagined the time would come when he would be taking breakfast with a real General, was nevertheless so hungry and so happy that he forgot rank and everything else. The General did too, it seemed, because he sat and sipped, and ate, and ate, and questioned the boys and finally wanted the story of the flight from the very first instead of getting it tail-end first in little pieces.

Bill told his side of the flight, and Ernest told his, and together they told about the landing in the farmer's field, and the amusing people and about Webby, the "pig-headed" and trustworthy one.

And then the General and Major smoked as though there were no dispatches for the General to read and no classes waiting for the Major--in fact, as though there was no military discipline at all. But as the General said, what was the use of being a General, anyway, if it didn't give you some privileges?

But at last the General jingled away, happy and quite full up with delicious coffee and things, and thinking Major Sherman was a lucky dog anyhow to have that little wife and fine boy. Before he left he gave an order for a guard for the airplane standing so calmly in the small field.

Close on his departure came the ambulance, and Major Sherman went off with Ernest to the Hospital for an X-ray of his broken arm.

Bill and his mother were alone.

Together they hustled the dishes into the kitchen and cleared up the living-room. Then Mrs. Sherman sat down in her favorite corner on the couch and Bill threw himself beside her with his tousled head in her lap.

"Goodness, Billy, you certainly _have_ grown!" she said. "Your legs trail way off the end, and when you went to school you didn't reach to the edge."

"Oh, come now, mother," said Bill, "quit fooling! I have grown about an inch."

"More than that," insisted Mrs. Sherman. "You are taller than I am now. What an awful time I am going to have bossing you around now that you are so big."

"You never _did_ boss me," boasted Bill. "You just twisted me around your little finger."

"I won't be slandered!" said Mrs. Sherman, pulling his hair. "You are tired now and I should think you would like a nice hot bath and a good long sleep."

"That does sound good, Mummy. We will have to stay here for awhile, you know, because of the quarantine. But we will get rested up in, a few hours."

"Yes, you _must_ get rested," said Mrs. Sherman, "because as soon as you feel right, I want you to take me for a ride in that nice, lovely airplane."

Bill sat up. "_What!_" he cried. "You--fly!"

Mrs. Sherman nodded, smiling. "Yes, _me_--fly!" she mimicked. "Bill, I am converted!"

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's Battling the Clouds, by Captain Frank Cobb