s yet know
nothing, and I pray you may never know. What letter have you there?"

Lyle read the letter, Jack silently pacing up and down the room,
listening, with a look of intense indignation deepening on his face,
until she had finished.

"It is as I have suspected all these years," he said, "the dastardly
villain! the scoundrel! Thank God, it is not yet too late, there are
those who can and will right the wrong, so far as it is possible to
right it."

At Lyle's request, they compared the picture with the photograph in
Jack's possession; they were one and the same, except that the latter
had been taken a few years earlier.

"Jack," said Lyle earnestly, "can you tell me anything about my
relatives? Are my grandparents living? and had my parents brothers or
sisters?"

"I have learned quite recently that your grandparents are still
living," Jack answered slowly, after a pause, "as to the others I
cannot say; even of your own mother I can trust myself to say but very
little, it is too painful!"

"What would you advise me to do now?" Lyle asked wistfully, but with
slight hesitation. "What would be the best course for me to take?"

With an expression unlike anything she had ever seen on his face, and
a depth of pathos in his voice she had never heard, he replied very
tenderly:

"I can no longer advise you, my dear Lyle; take these proofs which you
have found to Everard Houston; he can advise you now far better than
I; show them to him, my dear, and you will have no further need of
counsel or help from me, much as I wish it were in my power to give
both."

"To Mr. Houston?" Lyle had risen in her surprise, and stood regarding
Jack with tearful, perplexed astonishment; there was a hidden
significance in his words which as yet she could not fathom. "I do not
understand you, Jack; why do you speak as though you could no more be
to me the friend and counselor that you have been?"

He smiled one of his rare, sweet smiles. "Do as I have suggested,
dear,--then you will understand; and I shall want to see you for a few
moments again to-night, after you have seen him."

Somewhat reassured by his smile, and yet perplexed by his manner, Lyle
left the cabin and slowly returned to the house, everything about her
seeming unreal, as though she were walking in a dream.

Miss Gladden was chatting with Morton and Ned Rutherford, and in reply
to Lyle's question whether Mr. Houston had returned, stated that he
was in his room, ha