and turned
up the lamp. She would see what manner of girl it was who had scored so
heavily against her in this battle of hearts. She held the picture
close to the yellow flame and stared unbelievingly at the nearly
effaced features.

With a swift movement she tore the encircling cord from the packet and
examined it more closely. Her heart beat wildly, and the blood surged
through her veins in great, joyous waves. For the photograph showed,
not the dark features of the Indian girl, but--_her own_!

Worn almost beyond recognition it was, with corners peeled and rolled
back from the warped and water-thickened mounting--but unmistakably
_her picture_.

"He cares! He does care!" she repeated over and over. "Oh, my boy! My
boy!" And then her eyes fell upon the thick envelope with its worn
edges and open flap which lay unheeded upon the desk-top.

Mechanically she reached for it, and her hand came in contact with its
thick, heavily engraved contents. She raised the papers to the light
and stared; there were five in all, neatly folded, lying one upon
another.

The green background of the topmost one was faded and streaked, and a
thin, green wash had trickled over the edges of the others, staining
them.

A yellow slip of paper fluttered to the desk. She picked it up and read
the almost illegible, typewritten lines. It was a memorandum addressed
to Strang, Liebhardt & Co., and bearing the faded signature of Hiram
Carmody.

A sudden numbness overcame the girl. She sank slowly into the chair in
front of the desk and stared dully from the yellowed slip of paper to
the faded green bonds.

The room seemed suddenly cold, and she stared, unseeing, at her
bloodless finger-tips. She tried to think--to concentrate her mind upon
the present--but her brain refused to act, and she muttered helplessly:

"The bonds--the bonds--he took the bonds!"

Like one in a dream, she arose and replenished the fire in the little
air-tight. It had burned almost to ashes.

She watched the yellow flames lick hungrily at the bubbling pitch of
the knot she had thrown upon the coals, and glanced from the flaring
flames to the little pile of green papers--and back again at the little
flames that climbed higher about the resinous chunk.

"Why not?" she muttered. "They can never prove he took them, and he
would think that they were lost." For a long time she sat, thinking,
and then she closed the stove and returned to the desk.

"I stood by him whe