of recognition in his loneliness.

The two men glanced at each other. The leader looked at the boy
curiously, and said,--

"Are you the son of Colonel Brant, of Louisville?"

"Yes, sir," said the boy, with a dim stirring of uneasiness in his
heart. "But he's dead now," he added finally.

"Ah, when did he die?" said the man quickly.

"Oh, a long time ago. I don't remember him much. I was very little,"
said the boy, half apologetically.

"Ah, you don't remember him?"

"No," said Clarence shortly. He was beginning to fall back upon that
certain dogged repetition which in sensitive children arises from their
hopeless inability to express their deeper feelings. He also had an
instinctive consciousness that this want of a knowledge of his father
was part of that vague wrong that had been done him. It did not help his
uneasiness that he could see that one of the two men, who turned away
with a half-laugh, misunderstood or did not believe him.

"How did you come with the Silsbees?" asked the first man.

Clarence repeated mechanically, with a child's distaste of practical
details, how he had lived with an aunt at St. Jo, and how his stepmother
had procured his passage with the Silsbees to California, where he was