“Do you recognize it?” asked the old man.

Burnham seized it with both hands.

“It is his!” he exclaimed.  “It is Ralph’s!  He wore it that day.  Where did you get it?  Where did you get it, I say?”

Craft did not reply.  He was searching in his hand-bag for something else.  Finally he drew out a child’s cap, a quaint little thing of velvet and lace, and laid it on the table.

This, too, was grasped by Burnham with eager fingers, and looked upon with loving eyes.

“Do you still think me wild?” said the old man, “or do you believe now that I have some knowledge of what I am talking about?”

His listener did not answer the question.  His mind seemed to be far away.  He said, finally:—­

“There—­there was a locket, a little gold locket.  It had his father’s picture in it.  Did—­did you find that?”

The visitor smiled, opened the wallet again, and produced the locket.  The father took it in his trembling hands, looked on it very tenderly for a moment, and then his eyes became flooded with tears.

“It was his,” he said at last, very gently; “they were all his; tell me now—­where did you get them?”

“I came by them honestly, Mr. Burnham, honestly; and I have kept them faithfully.  But I will tell you the whole story.  I think you are ready now to hear it with attention, and to consider it fairly.”

The old man pushed his satchel aside, pulled his chair closer to the table, cleared his throat, and began:—­

“It was May 13, 1859.  I’d been out in the country at my son’s, and was riding into the city in the evening.  I was in the smoking-car.  Along about nine o’clock there was a sudden jerk, then half a dozen more jerks, and the train came to a dead stop.  I got up and went out with the rest, and we then saw that the bridge had broken down, and the three cars behind the smoker had tumbled into the creek.  I hurried down the bank and did what I could to help those in the wreck, but it was very dark and the cars were piled up in a heap, and it was hard to do anything.  Then the fire broke out and we had to stand back.  But I heard a child crying by a broken window, just where the middle car had struck across the rear one, and I climbed up there at the risk of my life and looked in.  The fire gave some light by this time, and I saw a young woman lying there, caught between the timbers and perfectly still.  A sudden blaze showed me that she was dead.  Then the child cried again; I saw where he was, and reached in and pulled him out just as the fire caught in his cloak.  I jumped down into the water with him, and put out the fire and saved him.  He wasn’t hurt much.  It was your boy Ralph.  By this time the wreck was all ablaze and we had to get up on the bank.