pants had scattered, no one could say whither. But, by a persistent
search among the neighboring houses, he did find a bright motherly
woman, who, more than fifteen years before, had come, a bride, to live
in an opposite house, and who well remembered a tall, dark-complexioned
young woman sitting one night on the steps of the shabby boarding-house
over the way. Some one had told her that this young woman had just been
saved from a shipwreck, and had lost everything but the clothes she
wore; and from sheer sympathy she, the young wife, had gone across the
street to speak to her. She had found her, at first, sullen and
uncommunicative. "The girl was a foreigner," said the long-ago bride,
now a blooming matron with four children. "Leastwise, though she
understood me and gave me short answers in English, it struck me she was
French-born. Her black stuff gown was dreadful torn and ruined by the
sea-water, sir, and so, as I was about her height, I made bold to offer
her one of mine in its place. I had a plenty then, and me and my young
man was accounted comfortable from the start. She shook her head and
muttered something about 'not bein' a beggar,' but do you know, sir,
that the next day she come over to me, as I was knitting at my little
window, and says she, 'I go on to London,' she says, 'and I'll take that
now, if you be pleased,' or something that way, I don't remember her
words; and so I showed her into my back room and put the fresh print
gown on her. I can see her now a-takin' the things out of her own gown
and pinning them so careful into the new pocket, because it wasn't so
deep and safe as the one in her old gown was; and then, tearin' off
loose tatters of the black skirt and throwing them down careless-like,
she rolled it up tight, and went off with it, a-noddin' her head and
a-maircying me in French, as pretty as could be. I can't bring to mind a
feature of her, exceptin' the thick, black hair, and her bein' about my
own size. I was slender then, young master; fifteen years makes--"

"And those bits of the old gown," interrupted Donald eagerly, "where are
they? Did you save them?"

"Laws, no, young gentleman, not I. They went into my rag-bag, like as
not, and are all thrown away and lost, sir, many a day agone, for that
matter."

"I am sorry," said Donald. "Even a scrap of her gown might possibly be
of value to me."

"Was she belonging to your family?" asked the woman, doubtfully.

Donald partly explained w