oon her face
showed a promise of the unusual beauty that was to come to her later in
life, when she had learned many things. There was a hint of tragedy in
her charming, wayward nature. The friends who loved her knew that her
path through life would not follow an easy and untroubled road. She
could never do anything in a half-way fashion, whether it were to love
or to hate, to be happy or to be miserable.

To-day her blue eyes were dark with wonder at her own appearance and
with the memory of her dead mother and father. With the strange jewels
in her hair and about her throat, the beautiful blue robe around her
shoulders, little country-bred Madge looked as though she might have
been a beautiful princess of the long ago.

Being free from vanity, however, she calmly folded up her silks, took
off her jewels, and turned from the window to go downstairs to show her
cousin her treasures.

At the door of the attic she paused and glanced back at the open trunk,
then, walking slowly toward it, deposited her jewel box and armful of
silks on the top of the old cedar chest and sat down before the trunk.
What strange influence drew her back to it that day Madge could never
explain. She knew only that the longing for the love of the father she
had never seen, and the mother she could not remember, was strong
within her.

"What made you leave me when I needed you so?" she murmured, half under
her breath. Then she bowed her head on the edge of the trunk and her
tears dropped on a little, old-fashioned black velvet coat that had
been her mother's. Impulsively Madge caught it up and pressed it to her
lips. After a long moment she laid it across her lap and began
smoothing it with loving hands, tenderly tracing its lines with her
forefinger. As she was about to fold it and lay it in its accustomed
place her hand came in contact with something hard in the cuff of one
sleeve between the velvet and the satin lining.

"What can it be?" she wondered, as she fingered it through the cloth.
"It feels like a key. If I break two or three stitches, I can pull it
out."

It was at least five minutes before she managed to make an opening
large enough to admit the working out of the little hard object. As she
had guessed, it was a small brass key with a bit of faded violet ribbon
attached to it.

Madge looked curiously at it as it lay in her hand. To whom did the key
belong? What did it unlock? Why had her mother sewed it into the sleeve
of t