I was in a maze of perplexity.  What should I do?  I shrank from the thought of the boy being taken away from us.  Since we had found him the dream-child had never called.  My wife seemed to have turned back from the dark borderland, where her feet had strayed to walk again with me in our own homely paths.  Day and night she was her old, bright self, happy and serene in the new motherhood that had come to her.  The only thing strange in her was her calm acceptance of the event.  She never wondered who or whose the child might be—­never seemed to fear that he would be taken from her; and she gave him our dream-child’s name.

At last, when a full week had passed, I went, in my bewilderment, to our old doctor.

“A most extraordinary thing,” he said thoughtfully.  “The child, as you say, must belong to the Spruce Cove people.  Yet it is an almost unbelievable thing that there has been no search or inquiry after him.  Probably there is some simple explanation of the mystery, however.  I advise you to go over to the Cove and inquire.  When you find the parents or guardians of the child, ask them to allow you to keep it for a time.  It may prove your wife’s salvation.  I have known such cases.  Evidently on that night the crisis of her mental disorder was reached.  A little thing might have sufficed to turn her feet either way—­back to reason and sanity, or into deeper darkness.  It is my belief that the former has occurred, and that, if she is left in undisturbed possession of this child for a time, she will recover completely.”

I drove around the harbor that day with a lighter heart than I had hoped ever to possess again.  When I reached Spruce Cove the first person I met was old Abel Blair.  I asked him if any child were missing from the Cove or along shore.  He looked at me in surprise, shook his head, and said he had not heard of any.  I told him as much of the tale as was necessary, leaving him to think that my wife and I had found the dory and its small passenger during an ordinary walk along the shore.

“A green dory!” he exclaimed.  “Ben Forbes’ old green dory has been missing for a week, but it was so rotten and leaky he didn’t bother looking for it.  But this child, sir—­it beats me.  What might he be like?”

I described the child as closely as possible.

“That fits little Harry Martin to a hair,” said old Abel, perplexedly, “but, sir, it can’t be.  Or, if it is, there’s been foul work somewhere.  James Martin’s wife died last winter, sir, and he died the next month.  They left a baby and not much else.  There weren’t nobody to take the child but Jim’s half-sister, Maggie Fleming.  She lived here at the Cove, and, I’m sorry to say, sir, she hadn’t too good a name.  She didn’t want to be bothered with the baby, and folks say she neglected him scandalous.  Well, last spring she begun talking of going away to the States.  She said a friend of hers had