nd, and there Larry read the prayers of the English church
over the two lonely graves, while Amalia knelt at his side. When they
went down the trail to take the train, after receiving Betty's letter,
they marked the place with a cross which Larry had made.

Truth to tell, as they sat in the car, facing each other, Larry
himself was sad, although he tried to keep Amalia's thoughts cheerful.
At last she woke to the thought that it was only for her he maintained
that forced light-heartedness, and the realization came to her that he
also had cause for sorrow on leaving the spot where he had so long
lived in peace, to go to a friend in trouble. The thought helped her,
and she began to converse with Larry instead of sitting silently,
wrapped in her own griefs. Because her heart was with Harry
King,--filled with anxiety for him,--she talked mostly of him, and
that pleased Larry well; for he, too, had need to speak of Harry.

"Now there is a character for you, as fine and sweet as a woman and
strong, too! I've seen enough of men to know the best of them when I
find them. I saw it in him the moment I got him up to my cabin and
laid him in my bunk. He--he--minded me of one that's gone." His voice
dropped to the undertone of reminiscence. "Of one that's long
gone--long gone."

"Could you tell me about it, a little--just a very little?" Amalia
leaned toward him pleadingly. It was the first time she had ever asked
of Larry Kildene or Harry King a question that might seem like seeking
to know a thing purposely kept from her. But her intuitive nature told
her the time had now come when Larry longed to speak of himself, and
the loneliness of his soul pleaded for him.

"It's little indeed I can tell you, for it's little he ever told
me,--but it came to me--more than once--more than once--that he might
be my own son."

Amalia recoiled with a shock of surprise. She drew in her breath and
looked in his eyes eloquently. "Oh! Oh! And you never asked him? No?"

"Not in so many words, no. But I--I--came near enough to give him the
chance to tell the truth, if he would, but he had reasons of his own,
and he would not."

"Then--where we go now--to him--you have been to that place before?
Not?"

"I have."

"And he--he knows it? Not?"

"He knows it well. I told him it was there I left my son--my little
son--but he would say nothing. I was not even sure he knew the place
until these letters came to me. He has as yet written me no word,