would not have wondered
at that, but that she should positively, under oath, deny their
relationship to each other, had not been to him, before, within the
range of possibility. His brightness and enthusiasm were quenched
in a moment, and a chill crept up to his heart, as he saw the lady
come down from the witness-stand, throw her widow's veil across her
face, and resume her seat at the table. The case had taken on a new,
strange, harsh aspect in his sight. It seemed to him that a barrier
had been suddenly erected between him and the lady whom he had learned
to love as his mother; a barrier which no verdict of the jury or
judgment of the court, even though he should receive them, would help
him to surmount.

Of what use were these things, if motherly recognition was to be
denied him? He began to feel that it would be almost better to go back
at once to the not unpleasant home with Bachelor Billy, than to try to
grasp something which, it now seemed, was lying beyond his reach.

He was just considering the advisability of crossing over to Sharpman
and suggesting to him that he was willing to drop the proceedings,
when that person called another witness to the stand. This was a
heavily built man, with close-cropped beard, bronzed face, and one
sleeve empty of its arm. He gave his name as William B. Merrick, and
said that he was conductor of the train that broke through the Cherry
Brook bridge, on the night of May 13, 1859.

"Did you see, on your train that night," asked Sharpman, "the witness
who has just left the stand?"

"I cannot be positive," the man replied, "but, to the best of my
recollection, the lady was a passenger in the rear car."

"With whom was she travelling?"

"With a gentleman whom I afterward learned was her husband, a little
boy some two or three years of age, and the child's nurse."

"Were there any other children on the train?"

"Yes, one, a boy of about the same age, riding in the same car in
company with an elderly gentleman."

"Did you see either of these children after the disaster?"

"I saw one of them."

"Which one?"

"I supposed, at the time, that it was the one who accompanied the old
gentleman."

"Why did you suppose so?"

"Because I saw a child who bore marks of having been in the wreck
riding in the car which carried the rescued passengers to the city,
and he was in company with an elderly man."

"Was he the same elderly man whom you saw with the child before the
accide