k several miles from where they found my
mother nearly crazed and with no baggage beyond this little tin box
and the clothes she wore. Grief and exposure had driven her almost
out of her mind, and in her ravings, they tell me, she talked
continuously about 'the brakes' and 'that glaring headlight.' And
then, toward the end, she spoke of her husband and said she couldn't
wake him up to speak to her. There is small doubt in my mind but that
he died in the wreck. Mother died the night I was born, and until I
was ten I lived in the poorhouse. Then I was hired out to a farmer,
and the third year on his place I met Betty, who came to spend the
summer there. An old bookman, investigating a pile of old books and
records at the poorhouse, found that Saunders was my mother's maiden
name and he traced my relatives for me."

Bob briefly sketched his trip to Washington and his experiences
there, and during the recital the aunts learned a great deal about
Betty, too. Their first shock at hearing that their sister had died
in the poorhouse gradually lessened, but they were still puzzled to
account for the three years' silence that had preceded his birth.

"I'll tell you how I think it was," said Bob. "This is only
conjecture, mind. I think my father wasn't successful in a business
way, and he must have wanted to give my mother comforts and luxuries
and a pleasant home. He probably kept thinking that in a few weeks
things would be better, and insensibly he persuaded her to put off
writing till she could ask you to come to see her. If she had lived
after I was born, I am sure she would have written, whether my father
prospered or not. But I imagine they were both proud."

"Faith was," assented Miss Hope. "Though dear knows, she needn't have
hesitated to have written home for a little help. Father would have
been glad to send her money, for he admired David and liked him. He
was a fine looking young man, Bob, tall and slender and with such
magnificent dark eyes. And Faith was a beautiful girl."

All the rest of that day the aunts kept recalling stories of Bob's
mother, and in the attic, just as Betty had known there would be,
they opened a trunk that was full of little keepsakes she had
treasured as a girl.

Bob handled the things in the little square trunk very tenderly and
reverently and tried to picture the young girl who had packed them
away so carefully the week before her wedding.

"They're yours, Bob," said Miss Hope. "Fait