e and disappeared.

II

In 1886 a young woman was living in a modest house near a secluded New
England village, with no company but a little boy about five years old.
She did her own work, she discouraged acquaintanceships, and had none.
The butcher, the baker, and the others that served her could tell the
villagers nothing about her further than that her name was Stillman, and
that she called the child Archy. Whence she came they had not been able
to find out, but they said she talked like a Southerner. The child had
no playmates and no comrade, and no teacher but the mother. She
taught him diligently and intelligently, and was satisfied with the
results--even a little proud of them. One day Archy said,

"Mamma, am I different from other children?"

"Well, I suppose not. Why?"

"There was a child going along out there and asked me if the postman had
been by and I said yes, and she said how long since I saw him and I
said I hadn't seen him at all, and she said how did I know he'd been by,
then, and I said because I smelt his track on the sidewalk, and she said
I was a dum fool and made a mouth at me. What did she do that for?"

The young woman turned white, and said to herself, "It's a birthmark!
The gift of the bloodhound is in him." She snatched the boy to her
breast and hugged him passionately, saying, "God has appointed the way!"
Her eyes were burning with a fierce light, and her breath came short and
quick with excitement. She said to herself: "The puzzle is solved now;
many a time it has been a mystery to me, the impossible things the child
has done in the dark, but it is all clear to me now."

She set him in his small chair, and said,

"Wait a little till I come, dear; then we will talk about the matter."

She went up to her room and took from her dressing-table several small
articles and put them out of sight: a nail-file on the floor under the
bed; a pair of nail-scissors under the bureau; a small ivory paper-knife
under the wardrobe. Then she returned, and said,

"There! I have left some things which I ought to have brought down." She
named them, and said, "Run up and bring them, dear."

The child hurried away on his errand and was soon back again with the
things.

"Did you have any difficulty, dear?"

"No, mamma; I only went where you went."

During his absence she had stepped to the bookcase, taken several books
from the bottom shelf, opened each, passed her hand over a page, noting
it