d themselves immensely
until a motor horn interrupted them. A car had evidently stopped in
front and someone now hurried over to the group around the fire.

"Well, children," called Dr. Hume, "I daresay you'll be interested in
the news I am bringing you."

"Wasn't I right?" cried Billie.

"He was a prince?"

"Or a duke, perhaps?"

"Even a baron is pretty good."

There was a long pause.

"You are wonderful guessers," said the doctor. "He lived in a palace."

"I knew it," cried Mary.

"Would it disappoint you very much if I were to tell you that the
gentleman without a memory who lived in a palace was not a prince, nor a
duke, nor a baron, but at one time a clergyman?"

"Oh!" they exclaimed in varying tones of surprise and disappointment.

"Then how the palace?" asked Maggie Hook.

"The Rev. Archibald Jones, a highly educated English gentleman of no
means to speak of, was tutor in a noble family in Germany."

"But his wife? She was a princess?" cried Mary, almost weeping.

"Every woman is a princess, my dear young lady," replied the gallant
doctor.

"But a real one, Doctor? One who lived in a palace?"

"She lived in the palace, yes. She was attached to the household as
English governess. The tutor and the governess met, as well they might
even in a grand castle, and being in the same boat as regards teaching
and birth, they fell in love. The lady was very beautiful, I
understand."

"And then?" demanded the chorus.

"Then they came to America where the field was larger even than in a
palace with the _noblesse_. The young wife fell sick and the young
husband, having saved a bit of money, brought her up into the mountains.
The night Phoebe was born he tried to take a short cut down the
mountainside to get a doctor who was stopping at a hotel now in
ruins----"

Percy bowed his head.

"I recognize the spot," he said.

"And the young tutor husband not of the nobility fell and hit his head
against a rock. He was brought back insensible by an old Indian
grandfather of Mrs. Lupo. The beautiful young wife only lived a few
days, and when the father was better and the baby stronger the Indian
took them and their belongings across the valley to Indian Head, where
they have lived ever since."

"Poor things," exclaimed Miss Campbell. "What a pitiful, sad story!"

"And the wife's name was Phoebe Jones?" asked Billie.

"Wrong again," replied the doctor. "Would you have a Jones marry a
Jones?"

"Then who,