rnham with eager fingers, and looked upon
with loving eyes.

"Do you still think me wild?" said the old man, "or do you believe now
that I have some knowledge of what I am talking about?"

His listener did not answer the question. His mind seemed to be far
away. He said, finally:--

"There--there was a locket, a little gold locket. It had his father's
picture in it. Did--did you find that?"

The visitor smiled, opened the wallet again, and produced the locket.
The father took it in his trembling hands, looked on it very tenderly
for a moment, and then his eyes became flooded with tears.

"It was his," he said at last, very gently; "they were all his; tell
me now--where did you get them?"

"I came by them honestly, Mr. Burnham, honestly; and I have kept them
faithfully. But I will tell you the whole story. I think you are ready
now to hear it with attention, and to consider it fairly."

The old man pushed his satchel aside, pulled his chair closer to the
table, cleared his throat, and began:--

"It was May 13, 1859. I'd been out in the country at my son's, and was
riding into the city in the evening. I was in the smoking-car. Along
about nine o'clock there was a sudden jerk, then half a dozen more
jerks, and the train came to a dead stop. I got up and went out with
the rest, and we then saw that the bridge had broken down, and the
three cars behind the smoker had tumbled into the creek. I hurried
down the bank and did what I could to help those in the wreck, but it
was very dark and the cars were piled up in a heap, and it was hard to
do anything. Then the fire broke out and we had to stand back. But I
heard a child crying by a broken window, just where the middle car had
struck across the rear one, and I climbed up there at the risk of my
life and looked in. The fire gave some light by this time, and I saw
a young woman lying there, caught between the timbers and perfectly
still. A sudden blaze showed me that she was dead. Then the child
cried again; I saw where he was, and reached in and pulled him out
just as the fire caught in his cloak. I jumped down into the water
with him, and put out the fire and saved him. He wasn't hurt much. It
was your boy Ralph. By this time the wreck was all ablaze and we had
to get up on the bank.

"I took the child around among the people there, and tried to find
out who he belonged to, but no one seemed to know anything about him.
He wasn't old enough to talk distinctly, so he