r name."

"A young woman?"

"Not very young. About forty, I suppose. She was small and
fair-haired, just a little bit gray, and very sad. She was in deep
mourning, and, I think, when she came, she expected to go at once. But
the child, Lucien, interested her. She talked to him for a long time,
and, indeed, she looked much happier when she left."

"You are sure this was not the real mother?"

"O mercy, no! Why, she didn't know which of the three was Lucien. I
thought perhaps she was a friend of yours, but, of course, I didn't
ask."

"She was not--pock-marked?" I asked at a venture. "No, indeed. A skin
like a baby's. But perhaps you will know the initials. She gave Lucien
a handkerchief and forgot it. It was very fine, black-bordered, and it
had three hand-worked letters in the corner--F. B. A."

"No," I said with truth enough, "she is not a friend of mine." F. B. A.
was Fanny Armstrong, without a chance of doubt!

With another warning to Mrs. Tate as to silence, we started back to
Sunnyside. So Fanny Armstrong knew of Lucien Wallace, and was
sufficiently interested to visit him and pay for his support. Who was
the child's mother and where was she? Who was Nina Carrington? Did
either of them know where Halsey was or what had happened to him?

On the way home we passed the little cemetery where Thomas had been
laid to rest. I wondered if Thomas could have helped us to find
Halsey, had he lived. Farther along was the more imposing
burial-ground, where Arnold Armstrong and his father lay in the shadow
of a tall granite shaft. Of the three, I think Thomas was the only one
sincerely mourned.

CHAPTER XXVIII

A TRAMP AND THE TOOTHACHE

The bitterness toward the dead president of the Traders' Bank seemed to
grow with time. Never popular, his memory was execrated by people who
had lost nothing, but who were filled with disgust by constantly
hearing new stories of the man's grasping avarice. The Traders' had
been a favorite bank for small tradespeople, and in its savings
department it had solicited the smallest deposits. People who had
thought to be self-supporting to the last found themselves confronting
the poorhouse, their two or three hundred dollar savings wiped away.
All bank failures have this element, however, and the directors were
trying to promise twenty per cent. on deposits.

But, like everything else those days, the bank failure was almost
forgotten by Gertrude and myself. We d