Durward did not answer, and after a little his companion said, “I suppose you know I sometimes take pictures for a livin’.  I’m goin’ to my office now, and if you’ll come with me I’ll take yourn for nothin’, bein’ you’re related.”

Mechanically, and because he had nothing else to do, Durward followed the young man to his “office,” which was a dingy, cheerless apartment in the fourth story of a crazy old building.  On the table in the center of the room were several likenesses, which he carelessly examined.  Coming at last to a larger and richer case, he opened it, but instantly it dropped from his hand, while an exclamation of surprise escaped his lips.

“What’s the row, old feller,” asked Joel, coming forward and picking up the picture which Durward had recognized as ’Lena Rivers.

“How came you by it?” said Durward eagerly, and with a knowing wink, Joel replied, “I know, and that’s enough.”

“But I must know, too.  It is of the utmost importance that I know,” said Durward, and after a moment’s reflection, Joel answered “Wall, I don’t s’pose it’ll do any hurt if I tell you.  When I was a boy I had a hankerin’ for ’Leny, and I didn’t get over it after I was grown, either, so a year or two ago I thought I’d go to Kentuck and see her.  Knowin’ how tickled she and Mrs. Nichols would be with a picter of their old home in the mountains, I took it for ’em and started.  In Albany I went to see a family that used to live in Slocumville.  The woman was a gal with ’Leny’s mother, and thought a sight of her.  Wall, in the chamber where they put me to sleep, was an old portrait, which looked so much like ‘Leny that in the mornin’ I asked whose it was, and if you b’lieve me, ’twas ’Leny’s mother!  You know she married, or thought she married, a southern rascal, who got her portrait taken and then run off, and the picter, which in its day was an expensive one, was sold to pay up.  A few years afterward, Miss Rice, the woman I was tellin’ you about, came acrost it, and bought it for a little or nothin’ to remember Helleny Nichols by.  Thinks to me, nothin’ can please ’Leny better than a daguerreotype of her mother, so I out with my apparatus and took it.  But when I come to see that they were as nigh alike as two peas, I hated to give it up, for I thought it would be almost as good as lookin’ at ’Leny.  So I kept it myself, but I don’t want her to know it, for she’d be mad.”

“Did you ever take a copy of this for any one?” asked Durward, a faint light beginning to dawn upon him.

“What a feller to hang on,” answered Joel, “but bein’ I’ve started, I’ll go it and tell the hull.  One morning when I was in Lexington, a gentleman came in, calling himself Mr. Graham, and saying he wanted a copy of an old mountain house which he had seen at Mr. Livingstone’s.  Whilst I was gettin’ it ready, he happened to come acrost this one, and what is the queerest of all, he like to fainted away.  I had to throw water in his face and everything.  Bimeby he cum to, and says he, ‘Where did you get that?’ I told him all about it, and then, layin’ his head on the table, he groaned orfully, wipin’ off the thumpinest great drops of sweat and kissin’ the picter as if he was crazy.