Fuller explanation came in a letter to Miss Drayton, forwarded by the consul at Nantes.  Mr. Mayo thanked her for her care and goodness to Anne—­the words smote her heart.  He had spent these two years at work in South Africa and had laid aside every possible penny of his earnings in order to keep his niece from being a burden on strangers.  This money he was putting in a certain New York banking-house for Miss Drayton in trust for Anne.  He requested her to use it to educate Anne and to buy back the child’s old home.  It would be better, when Anne was old enough to understand the matter, to tell her the truth about him.  He asked Miss Drayton to say that his regret, his repentance, were as great as his sin.  He had come to realize that the disgrace was in the deed he had done and not in its punishment.  So, having righted affairs for Anne as well as he could, he was going to surrender himself to the officers of the law.  He was tired of being followed everywhere by fear of discovery, tired of being an outcast from his own land and people.  The worst hurt was to think that Anne must some day know that he was in a felon’s cell.

Only one course lay open to Miss Drayton, and how painful that was!  She must inform Anne’s uncle that she had not taken care of Anne, as he thought, and that the child had been sent to an orphan asylum, from which she had wandered away, no one knew where.  If only he need not be told!  But he must.

Miss Drayton and Mr. Patterson resolved to go to see Mr. Mayo.  But the proposed journey was never made.  A day or two before they were to start, the newspapers announced that Mr. Carey Mayo had died in the prison to which he had been committed to await trial.  He had heart disease, and strain and excitement had brought on a fatal attack.

What was to be done about the property left to Miss Drayton in trust for Anne?  Mr. Patterson advised his sister-in-law to let the matter rest for the present.  Anne might be found.  Mrs. Marshall wrote that they had a clew which they were following.  A little girl, answering in general the description of Anne, had been seen near Westcot with a gypsy band.  They would continue the search and never give up hope.

Christmas was now at hand and Miss Drayton, always ready for deeds of charity, resolved to send holiday gifts and dinners to several poor families.

Telephoning to the district agent of the Associated Charities, she obtained the names of some ‘deserving poor,’ and a crisp, clear December morning found her driving from one home to another, talking with mothers and receiving children’s messages to Santa Claus.  On the ragged edge of the city, her coachman halted before a little brown house from the porch of which hung a leafless rose-bush.  Miss Drayton consulted the card in her hand:  “John Edward Callahan, wife, and seven children.”  Two or three smiling children, not yet of school age, were peeping out of the window and a woman left her sewing-machine to open the door.