and he a kind, loving, guiding father.  Walking beside me and helping to support me, we soon reached the shack in which he lived.  He took the dead child from my arms, and carried it tenderly into the house; then he came back and helped me to dismount.  He asked no further questions, but led me inside, too, soothing my outburst of grief as the reaction came in full force.  Of what happened afterward I have no memory.  For the time, I lost my reason, and he, day by day, night by night, watched over me, bathing my hot forehead, moistening my parched lips, trying to give me courage to pass through the awful ordeal.

“It was all of two weeks that I was there, so he told me afterward.  As my reason returned, his first thought was to get me back to my father’s ranch, having learned who I was and enough of what had happened to understand the situation.  Before we left, he took me to the little mound back of the shack, where I said ‘good-bye’ to the one ray of sunshine which had entered my life during those awful years.  Then he helped me on my mare and mounted his own horse.  Together we rode silently back over the seven or eight miles, only to learn that my father had suddenly died, partly from the shock and partly from my unexplained absence.  The old man’s strength could not endure the double blow.

“In dismay I turned to my protector, and he at once answered the query which he read in my eyes.  He made arrangements, and accompanied me to Denver, leaving me in a hospital there, where for two months I hovered between life and death, owing to a relapse.  I saw him only once again, when he came to the hospital and told me that he had placed my affairs in the hands of a certain lawyer, who would look after what property my father left, and would advise me after I was able to leave the hospital.  Then he passed out of my life, though I was told later that he stayed in Denver until I was out of danger, before he returned East.  In my condition and because of the excitement, his name was a blank to me from the moment I left the hospital, and I have striven ever since to recall it.  The lawyer to whom he referred me professed not to know it, and simply said that the man had described himself as a prospector from the East.”

As Eleanor paused from weakness, Covington glanced across to Gorham.

“Her story doesn’t differ much from that contained in the affidavit,” he remarked.

“No,” Gorham answered, shortly; “it is the same story with a different interpretation.”

“What do you think of it now?”

“Just as I have from the beginning.”

“You don’t believe me!” Eleanor cried, half-beseechingly, half-reproachfully.  “I don’t wonder,—­it is past belief.”

“You must believe her, daddy,” Alice insisted, ready to burst into tears; “she has tried so many times to tell you.”

“I do believe you, Eleanor,” Gorham replied.  “And what is more, I know that you speak the truth.”