California.

"KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS," it began, "that I, JAMES CROMPTON, am
a coward and a sneak and a villain, and have lived a lie for forty
years, hiding a secret I was too proud to divulge at first, and which
grew harder and harder to tell as time went on and people held me so
high as the soul of honor and rectitude. Honor! There isn't a hair of it
on my head! I broke the heart of an innocent girl, and left her to die
alone. AMY EUDORA SMITH is my own daughter, the lawful child of my
marriage with EUDORA HARRIS, which took place December--, 18--, on the
Hardy Plantation, Fulton County, in Georgia, several miles from
Atlanta."

Up to this point Howard had been standing, but now the floor seemed to
rise up and strike him in the face. Sitting down in the nearest chair,
he breathed hard for a moment, and then went on with what the Colonel
called his CONFESSION, which he had not had courage to make verbally
while living.

When in college he had for his room-mate Tom Hardy from Atlanta. The two
were fast friends, and when the Colonel was invited to visit Georgia he
did so gladly. Some miles from the town was the plantation owned by the
Hardys. This the Colonel visited in company with his friend. A small
log-house on a part of the farm was rented to a Mr. Brown, a perfectly
respectable man, but ignorant and coarse. His family consisted of
himself and wife and son, and daughter Mary, a pretty girl of twenty,
and a cousin from Florida, Eudora Harris, a beautiful girl of sixteen,
wholly uneducated and shy as a bird. There was about her a wonderful
fascination for the Colonel, who went with his friend several times to
the Brown's, and mixed with them familiarly for the sake of the girl
whose eyes welcomed him so gladly, and in which he at last read
unmistakable signs of love for himself, while the broad jokes of her
friends warned him of his danger. Then his calls ceased, for nothing was
further from his thought than marriage with Eudora. At last there came
to him and Tom a badly written and spelled invitation to Mary's wedding,
which was to take place on the afternoon of the nineteenth day of
December, 18--.

"Let's go; there'll be no end of fun," Tom said, but when the day came
he was ill in bed with influenza, and the Colonel went without him,
reaching the house just as the family were taking a hasty lunch,
preparatory to the feast which was to follow the wedding.

"I sat down with them," the Colonel wrote, "