An instant later he looked up and smiled and held out his hand with a
curious instinct of kindliness he had, even as a very little fellow.

"Don't feel so awful bad, Uncle Grant!" he said shyly. "I love you
too. Don't I, mother?" I don't know, but I think Ann cried.

I choked and stumbled from the room.

So, for me, ended the singular episode of my life that has condemned me
again to the fate of a wanderer, drifting about like thistledown in the
wind of fancy.

There is but one chance in many hundred that this paper, which bears
upon the back the address of solicitors who will always know my
whereabouts--sealed and buried after a whim of mine as it will be--will
ever come to the eyes of him for whom it is intended, but maddened by
the thought that I must go through life alone--and lonely--without
hinting to my son the truth, I have desperately begged from Ann the
boon of the single chance, forlorn as it is, that I may have some
flickering hope to feed upon. And she, out of the compassionate
recognition that for the single moment of creation I am entitled to
this at least, has granted it. If this paper ever comes to the eyes of
my son--and I am irrevocably pledged to drop no hint of its
whereabouts--then--and not until then--are all my pledges void.

Who knows? In the years to come, some wild freak of destiny may guide
the feet of my son to the secret of the candlestick. I shall live and
pray and likely die a childless, unhappy old man, whose Fate lies
buried profoundly in the sealed, invulnerable heart of a Spanish
candlestick--a stranger to his son.

Grant Satterlee.

It was the name of a wealthy bachelor whose lonely austerity of life
upon a yacht which rarely lingered in any port, whose quiet acts of
philanthropy as he roved hermitlike about the world, had been the talk
of continents.

Reading to the end, Carl dropped the scattering sheets and buried his
face in his hands, unnerved and shaking.

CHAPTER LI

IN THE ADIRONDACKS

To the wild, out-of-the-world hunting lodge in the Adirondack
wilderness of tree and lake and trout-haunted mountain stream which had
been part of Norman Westfall's heritage, came, one twilight of cloud
and wind, Diane, tanned with the wind and sun of a year's
wandering--and very tired.

Wild relief at Carl's tale of the jealous Indian, thoughts of Philip,
of Carl, of Keela, of Ronador, all these, persistently haunting the
girl's harassed mind, had weari