is fourteen." They went into the counting-house and he confessed
that he had taken the handkerchief, but that it was taken by mistake
and that he was about to restore it when he was arrested. The poor
girl was now herself again, but her mind was an entire blank as to
what she had done, and she could not doubt her father's statement,
for it was a man's handkerchief and the bag was in his hands. The
draper was inexorable, and as he had suffered much from petty thefts
of late, had determined to make an example of the first offender whom
he could catch. The father was accordingly prosecuted, convicted and
sentenced to imprisonment. When his term had expired, his daughter,
who, I am glad to say, never for an instant lost her faith in him,
went away with him to a distant part of the country, where they lived
under an assumed name. About ten years afterwards he died and kept
his secret to the last; but he had seen the complete recovery and
happy marriage of his child. It was remarkable that it never
occurred to her that she might have been guilty, but her father's
confession, as already stated, was apparently so sincere that she
could do nothing but believe him. You will wonder how the facts were
discovered. After his death a sealed paper disclosing them was
found, with the inscription, "Not to be opened during my daughter's
life, and if she should have children or a husband who may survive
her, it is to be burnt." She had no children, and when she died as
an old woman, her husband also being dead, the seal was broken.'

'Probably,' said Madge, 'nobody except his daughter believed he was
not a thief. For her sake he endured the imputation of common
larceny, and was content to leave the world with only a remote chance
that he would ever be justified.'

'I wonder,' said Frank, 'that he did not admit that it was his