"'Honey, honey! Sweet, sweet, sweet!
Honey, honey! Honey-Sweet!'"

CHAPTER XXVIII

All this time--so little is our big world--Miss Drayton was hardly a
stone's throw from Anne. She was keeping house for her brother-in-law
who was busy with office work in Washington. Pat was at home, having
entered classes to prepare for George Washington University. It was
strange that Anne and her old friends went to and fro, back and forth,
so near together and yet did not meet. They must have missed one another
sometimes by only a minute or two in a shop or on a street-car or at a
street corner. But week after week passed without bringing them
together.

One morning, as Mr. Patterson was glancing over his newspaper at
breakfast, he uttered an exclamation of surprise. "This is something
you'll want to hear," he said to Miss Drayton--and then he read aloud
an article with these headlines:--

Truth Stranger than Fiction

"Felon Gives himself up

"Returns to take his Punishment."

Mr. Carey Mayo of New York City, who had used funds of the Stuyvesant
Trust Company and had disappeared two years before just as he was about
to be arrested, had surrendered himself to the officers of the law. His
trial was set for an early day. As he had given himself up of his own
free will, it was thought that his sentence would be light.

Fuller explanation came in a letter to Miss Drayton, forwarded by the
consul at Nantes. Mr. Mayo thanked her for her care and goodness to
Anne--the words smote her heart. He had spent these two years at work in
South Africa and had laid aside every possible penny of his earnings in
order to keep his niece from being a burden on strangers. This money he
was putting in a certain New York banking-house for Miss Drayton in
trust for Anne. He requested her to use it to educate Anne and to buy
back the child's old home. It would be better, when Anne was old enough
to understand the matter, to tell her the truth about him. He asked Miss
Drayton to say that his regret, his repentance, were as great as his
sin. He had come to realize that the disgrace was in the deed he had
done and not in its punishment. So, having righted affairs for Anne as
well as he could, he was going to surrender himself to the officers of
the law. He was tired of being followed everywhere by fear of discovery,
tired of being an outcast from his own land and people. The worst hurt
was to think that Anne