cerning
the future had brought on one of the dreaded heart attacks which
were so terribly frequent in the last weeks of her life. We had never
spoken of the matter afterward, for she did not leave her bed again
until the end.

At one time she had motioned me to bring from her desk the
old-fashioned key ring on which she kept her keys. She had held up
two, a tiny key and a larger one, and whispered hoarsely: "These keys
are the keys to the lock box and the little trunk--you know where
the others belong." Then she had closed her eyes, as if the effort of
speaking had exhausted her, as indeed it had.

In the wild grief which followed my mother's death there was no
thought of my unknown father except the bitterness I had always felt
toward him. I knew that the terrible sorrow he had caused my mother
had helped to shorten her life, and my heart was hot with anger
against him.

I had never opened the trunk since her death. The exciting, almost
tragic experiences of my life with Dicky had swept all the old days
into the background. I could not analyze the change that had come over
me. As I lifted the lid of the trunk and took from the top tray the
inlaid box which my mother's hands had last touched, my grief for her
was mingled with a strange new longing to find out anything I could
concerning the father I had never known.

"For my daughter Margaret's eyes alone."

The superscription on the envelope which I held in my hand stared up
at me with all the sentience of a living thing. The letters were in
the crabbed, trembling, old-fashioned handwriting of my mother--the
last words that she had ever written. It was as if she had come back
from the dead to talk to me.

With the memory of my mother's advice, I hesitated for a long time
before breaking the seal. With the letters pressed close against my
tear-wet cheeks I sat for a long time, busy with memories of my mother
and debating whether or not I had the right to open the letter.

I certainly was not in desperate straits, and I could not
conscientiously say that I no longer harbored any resentment
toward^the father of whom I had no recollection. I felt that never in
my life could I fully pardon the man who had made my mother suffer so
terribly. But the longing to know something of my father, which I had
felt since the coming into my life of Robert Gordon, had become almost
an obsession, with me.

"Little mother," I whispered, "forgive me if I am doing wrong, but I
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