e care of honest, reliable,
tender-hearted people, who would not abuse the trust she was to impose.
The Boggs City man said he had been in Albany to see about a bill in the
legislature, which was to provide for the erection of a monument in
Tinkletown--where a Revolutionary battle had been fought. It was he who
spoke of Anderson Crow, and it was his stories of your goodness and
generosity, Mr. Crow, that caused them to select you as the man who was
to have Rosalie, and, with her, the sum of one thousand dollars a year
for your trouble and her needs.

"My mother's description of that stormy night in February, more than
twenty-one years ago, is the most pitiful thing I have ever listened to.
Together they made their way to Tinkletown, hiring a vehicle in Boggs
City for the purpose. Mr. Banks left the basket on your porch while
mother stood far down the street and waited for him, half frozen and
heartsick. Then they hurried out of town and were soon safely on their
way to New York. It was while my stepfather was in London, later on,
that mother came up to see Rosalie and make that memorable first payment
to Mr. Crow. How it went on for years, you all know. It was my
stepfather's cleverness that made it so impossible to learn the source
from which the mysterious money came.

"We travelled constantly, always finding new places of interest in which
my mother's conscience could be eased by contact with beauty and
excitement. Gradually she became hardened to the conditions, for, after
all, was it not her own child who was to be enriched by the theft and
the deception? Mr. Banks constantly forced that fact in upon her
mother-love and her vanity. Through it all, however, you were never
neglected nor forgotten. My mother had your welfare always in mind. It
was she who saw that you and I were placed at the same school in New
York, and it was she who saw that your training in a way was as good as
it could possibly be without exciting risk.

"Of course, I knew nothing of all this. I was rolling in wealth and
luxury, but not in happiness. Instinctively I loathed my stepfather. He
was hard, cruel, unreasonable. It was because of him that I left school
and afterward sought to earn my own living. You know, Rosalie, how Tom
Reddon came into my life. He was the son of William Reddon, my
stepfather's business partner, who had charge of the Western branch of
the concern in Chicago. We lived in Chicago for several years,
establishing the b