before my mother's marriage, Aunt Sarah says. How my parents came to pin
the Stoningtons' address on my baby dress they can only guess. And I'll
never know. Probably they did it before they were--were drowned."

"Then your name isn't Stonington after all, Amy?"

"Oh, yet it is. The queer part of it is that my mother is said to have
married a man of the same name as Uncle John, but no relative, as far as
we can learn. So I'm Amy Stonington just the same. My uncle and aunt
formally adopted me after they found that there was no hope of locating
my parents. And so I've lived in ignorance of the mystery about me until
just the other day."

"And then they told you?"

"Yes. It was discussing the advisability of this that caused Uncle John
and Aunt Sarah to confer so often. Then they decided that I was getting
old enough to be told. They said they would rather it would come to me
from themselves than from strangers."

"Oh, then others know of it?"

"Yes, a few persons in town, but they were good enough to keep it quiet
for my sake. Among them, so Uncle John told me, were Alice Jallow's
people. That is why I think she wrote the note. She must have found out
about my secret in some way, and thought to taunt me with it."

"The mean creature!"

"Oh, I don't mind. I was only afraid you girls--"