short and peremptory visit, during which he was able to impress upon them his importance, his reasons for changing his name, which they could not now remember, and the great necessity which this made for them not to come near him as their nephew.  They had tried to do what he asked, but it had been hard.  “Charity,” Miss Thankful proceeded to bewail with a forgetfulness of her own share in the matter, “had not been able to keep her eyes long off the house which held, as she supposed, our double treasure.”  So this was all!  Nothing to aid me; nothing to aid Mayor Packard.  Rising in my disappointment, I prepared to leave.  I had sufficient self-control and I hope good feeling not to add to their distress at this time by any unnecessary revelations of a past they were ignorant of, or the part this unhappy nephew of theirs had played and still promised to play in the lives of their immediate neighbors.

Miss Thankful squeezed my hand and Miss Charity gave me a kiss; then as she saw her sister looking aside, whispered in my ear “I want to show you something, all of Johnnie’s little toys and the keepsakes he sent us when he was a good boy and loved his aunts.  You will not think so badly of him then.”

I let Miss Charity lead me away.  A drawer held all these treasures.  I looked and felt to a degree the pathos of the scene; but did not give special attention to what she thrust under my eyes till she gave me a little old letter to read, soiled and torn with the handling of many years and signed John Silverthorn Brainard.  Then something in me woke and I stared at this signature, growing more and more excited as I realized that this was not the first time I had seen it, that somewhere and in circumstances which brought a nameless thrill I had looked upon it before and that—­it was not one remembrance but many which came to me.  What the spoken name had not recalled came at the sight of this written one.  Bess! there was her long and continued watch over the house once entered by her on any and every pretext, but now shunned by her with a secret terror which could not disguise her longing and its secret attraction; her certificate of marriage; the name on this certificate—­the very one I was now staring at—­John Silverthorn Brainard!  Had I struck an invaluable clue?  Had I, through the weakness and doting fondness of this poor woman, come upon the one link which would yet lead us to identify this hollow-hearted, false and most vindictive man of great affairs with the wandering and worthless husband of the nondescript Bess, whose hand I had touched and whose errand I had done, little realizing its purport or the influence it would have upon our lives?  I dared not believe myself so fortunate; it was much too like a fairy dream for me to rely on it for a moment; yet the possibility was enough to rouse me to renewed effort.  After we had returned to Miss Thankful’s side, I asked her, with an apology for my inexhaustible curiosity, if she still felt afraid of the thread and needle woman across the way.