containing a child's slip and some trinkets. The paper wrapper of the
packet bore an inscription that awakened my curiosity. I asked father
Hohlfelder whose the things had been, and then for the first time I
learned my real story.

"I was not their own daughter, he stated, but an adopted child.
Twenty-three years ago, when he had lived in St. Louis, a steamboat
explosion had occurred up the river, and on a piece of wreckage floating
down stream, a girl baby had been found. There was nothing on the child
to give a hint of its home or parentage; and no one came to claim it,
though the fact that a child had been found was advertised all along the
river. It was believed that the infant's parents must have perished in
the wreck, and certainly no one of those who were saved could identify
the child. There had been a passenger list on board the steamer, but the
list, with the officer who kept it, had been lost in the accident. The
child was turned over to an orphan asylum, from which within a year it
was adopted by the two kind-hearted and childless German people who
brought it up as their own. I was that child."

The woman seated by Clara's side had listened with strained attention.
"Did you learn the name of the steamboat?" she asked quietly, but
quickly, when Clara paused.

"The Pride of St. Louis," answered Clara. She did not look at Mrs.
Harper, but was gazing dreamily toward the front, and therefore did not
see the expression that sprang into the other's face,--a look in which
hope struggled with fear, and yearning love with both,--nor the strong
effort with which Mrs. Harper controlled herself and moved not one
muscle while the other went on.