I kept her in view even when she crossed the Atlantic last year, and paid her a visit a week ago to-night." "Humph!" was Carl Walraven's comment.

"Well, Mistress Miriam, it might have been worse; no thanks to you, though.

And now--what does she know of her own story ?" "Nothing." "What ?" "Nothing, I tell you.

Her name is Mary Dane, and she is seventeen years old on the twenty-fifth of November.

Her father and mother are dead--poor but honest people, of course--and I am Aunt Miriam, earning a respectable living by washing clothes and scrubbing floors.