has around her neck! I have them yet!" She
rushed from the room and returned in a moment with the beads in her
hand.

Meanwhile Jan and Marie had stood still, too astonished to do more than
stare from one amazed and excited face to the other, as their new
father and mother gazed, first at them, and then at the locket, and
last at the beads, scarcely daring to believe the testimony of their
own eyes. "To think," cried Madame Dujardin at last, "that I should not
have known! But there are many Van Hoves in Belgium, and it never
occurred to me that they could be my own flesh and blood. It is years
since I have heard from Leonie. In fact, I hardly knew she had any
children, our lives have been so different. Oh, it is all my fault,"
she cried, weeping again. "But if I have neglected her, I will make it
up to her children! It may be, oh, it is just possible that she is
still alive, and that she may yet write to me after all these years!
Sorrow sometimes bridges wide streams!"

Then she turned more quietly to the children.

"You see, dears," she said, "I left Belgium many years ago, and came
with your uncle to this country. We were poor when we came, but your
uncle has prospered as one can in America. At first Leonie and I wrote
regularly to each other. Then she grew more and more busy, and we
seemed to have no ties in common, so that at last we lost sight of each
other altogether." She opened her arms to Marie and Jan as she spoke,
and held them for some time in a close embrace.

Finally she lifted her head and laughed. "This will never do!" she
exclaimed. "You must have your baths, even if you are my own dear niece
and nephew. The water must be perfectly cold by this time!"

She went into the bathroom, turned on more hot water, and popped Marie
into the tub. In half an hour both children had said their prayers and
were tucked away for the night in their clean white beds.

Wonderful days followed for Jan and Marie. They began to go to school;
they had pretty clothes and many toys, and began to make friends among
the little American children of the neighborhood. But in the midst of
these new joys they did not forget their mother, still looking for
them, or their father, now fighting, as they supposed, in the cruel
trenches of Belgium. But at last there came a day when Aunt Julie
received a letter with a foreign postmark. She opened it, with
trembling fingers, and when she saw that it began, "My dear Sister
Julie," she we