"No, far from it. Look here." Chester read out: "'_Now, Maud,' said my
uncle_--Oh, me! Landry, if the tale's true why that old story-book pose?"

"It may be that the writer preferred to tell it as fiction, and that only
something in me told me 'tis true. Something still tells me so."

"'_Now, Maud_,'" Chester smilingly thought to himself when, the evening's
later engagement being gratifyingly fulfilled, he sat down with the
story. "And so you were grand'mère to our Royal Street miracle. And you
had a Southern uncle! So had I! though yours was a planter, mine a
lawyer, and yours must have been fifty years the older. Well, '_Now,
Maud_,' for my absorption!"

It came. Though the tale was unamazing amazement came. The four chief
characters were no sooner set in motion than Chester dropped the pamphlet
to his knee, agape in recollection of a most droll fact a year or two
old, which now all at once and for the first time arrested his attention.
He also had a manuscript! That lawyer uncle of his, saying as he spared
him a few duplicate volumes from his law library, "Burn that if you don't
want it," had tossed him a fat document indorsed: "_Memorandum of an
Early Experience_." Later the nephew had glanced it over, but, like
"Maud's" story, its first few lines had annoyed his critical sense and he
had never read it carefully. The amazing point was that "_Now, Maud_"
and this "_Memorandum_" most incredibly--with a ridiculous nicety--fitted
each other.

He lifted the magazine again and, beginning at the beginning a third
time, read with a scrutiny of every line as though he studied a witness's
deposition. And this was what he read: