sufficient reasons, which were not dishonorable to myself or to others, and beyond that I would say nothing.  I suppose the poor fellows had to tax their imaginations to fill their columns.  I don’t know what the result will be with regard to Clemency, but I could not help it.”  There was something painfully appealing in Gordon’s look and manner.  He seemed so broken that James was alarmed.  He said everything that he was able to say to soothe him, commended the course which he had taken, and told him what he had said at the store, without repeating the insinuations which had led him to fabricate such a tale.  Gordon smiled bitterly.  “All your fellowmen want of you is food for their animal appetites or their mental,” he said.  “They must have meat and drink for their stomachs, as well as for their curiosity and malice.  I have lived here all these years, and labored for them for mighty poor recompense, and sometimes for none at all, and I’ll warrant that to-day I am more in their minds than I have ever been before, because they have found out my secret, which has been the torture of my life.  I wonder if Clemency has heard anything about it.”

“I will go and see,” replied James.

The minute he saw Clemency, who was in the parlor, he knew that she knew.  By her side on the floor was the Stanbridge Record.  She looked at James and pointed to it without a word.  Her face was white as death.  James took up the paper.  That merely announced the fact of Mrs. Gordon’s death, dwelt upon her many beautiful qualities of mind and body, her great suffering, and stated briefly the astonishment with which the news was received that she was Doctor Gordon’s wife, and not his sister, as people had been led to suppose.  “Little Annie Codman just brought it over,” said Clemency.  “She said her mother sent it.  It is just like her mother.  Mr. Codman never would have done such a thing.”

Mr. Codman was the minister.

James, for a second, did not know what to say.  He thought of the absurd story which he had told, or rather suggested, at the store, and realized that such a fabrication would not answer here.

Immediately Clemency fired a point-blank question at him.  “Who am I?” she asked.

“You are Doctor Gordon’s niece, dear.”

“But—­she was not my mother.”

“No, dear.”

“Who am I?”

“You are the daughter of Doctor Gordon’s youngest sister, who died when you were born.”

Clemency sat reflecting, her forehead knit, a keen look in her blue eyes.  “I knew my father was dead,” she said after a little.  “Uncle Tom has always told me that he passed away three months before I was born, but—­” She raised a puzzled, shocked, grieved face to James.  “What is my name?” she asked.  “My real name?”

James hesitated.  Then his mind reverted to the tale which he had told at the store.  He could see no other way out of the difficulty.  “Did you never hear of two brothers marrying two sisters, dear?” he asked.