them."

"How sad and terrible!" cried Margaret Elizabeth. "Can you remember it?
How lost and lonely you must have been! Poor little child!"

"I recall it only in a vague way," he answered, "confused with what has
since been told me. When it was known that my parents were lost, a man
and his wife, fellow passengers, offered to adopt me. Beyond the name
'Robert Deane, Wife and Child,' on the list at the ship's office, they
were unable to learn anything about me, and I was too young and
bewildered to give any clue."

"That is very strange," said Margaret Elizabeth. "Your new father and
mother were kind to you?"

"So kind I soon forgot the terror and loneliness, and grew happy and
content. Everything was done to make me forget, and I think while they
made every effort to find out something about me, they were glad when
they failed. I wish now that my childish memories might have been
fostered, for I find myself reaching back into a mist full of vague
shapes.

"My new father was a civil engineer, whose work took him here, there and
everywhere throughout the broad West. I never knew a permanent home. My
adopted mother died when I was twelve. After that came boarding school
and college. About the time I left college my father's health failed,
and for several years he was helpless and very dependent upon me, so
I gave up my plan of entering a mining school.

"It was during his illness that he began to speak to me of my own