n punishment on people who are
guilty of no crime," responded Craft, coolly; "and there is no
criminal charge that you can fairly bring against me. Poverty is my
worst crime. I have done nothing except for your benefit. Now, Mr.
Burnham you are excited. Calm yourself and listen to reason. Don't you
see that if I were to give those things to you I would be putting out
of my hands the best evidence I have of the truth of my assertions?"

"But I have seen you produce them. I will not deny that you gave them
to me."

"Ah! very good; but you may die before night! What then?"

"Die before night! Absurd! But keep the things; keep them. I can do
without them if you will restore the child himself to me. When did you
say you would bring him?"

"Friday afternoon."

"Until Friday afternoon, then, I wait."

"Very well, sir; good day!"

"Good day!"

The old man picked up his cane, rose slowly from his chair, and, with
his satchel in his hand, walked softly out, closing the door carefully
behind him.

Robert Burnham continued his walk up and down the room, his flushed
face showing alternately the signs of the hope and the doubt that were
striving for the mastery within him.

For eight years he had believed his boy to be dead. The terrible
wreck at Cherry Brook had yielded up to him from its ashes only a few
formless trinkets of all that had once been his child's, only a few
unrecognizable bones, to be interred, long afterward, where flowers
might bloom above them. The last search had been made, the last clew
followed, the last resources of wealth and skill were at an end, and
these, these bones and trinkets were all that could be found. Still,
the fact of the child's death had not been established beyond all
question, and among the millions of remote possibilities that this
world always holds in reserve lingered yet the one that he might after
all be living.

And now came this old man with his strange story, and the cap and the
cloak and the locket. Did it mean simply a renewal of the old hope,
destined to fade away again into a hopelessness duller than the last?

But what if the man's story were true? What if the boy were really in
life? What if in two days' time the father should clasp his living
child in his arms, and bear him to his mother! Ah! his mother. She
would have given her life any time to have had her child restored to
her, if only for a day. But she had been taught early to believe that
he was dead It wa