"Thank you," she answered proudly. "At any rate, I took the boy and
called him Terence Colby."

"Why that name," muttered Vance, "I never could understand."

"Haven't I told you? No, and I hardly know whether to trust even you with
the secret, Vance. But you remember we argued about it, and you said that
blood would out; that the boy would turn out wrong; that before he was
twenty-five he would have shot a man?"

"I believe the talk ran like that."

"Well, Vance, I started out with a theory; but the moment I had that baby
in my arms, it became a matter of theory, plus, and chiefly plus. I kept
remembering what you had said, and I was afraid. That was why I worked up
the Colby idea."

"That's easy to see."

"It wasn't so easy to do. But I heard of the last of an old Virginia
family who had died of consumption in Arizona. I traced his family. He
was the last of it. Then it was easy to arrange a little story: Terence
Colby had married a girl in Arizona, died shortly after; the girl died
also, and I took the baby. Nobody can disprove what I say. There's not a
living soul who knows that Terence is the son of Jack Hollis--except you
and me."

"How about the woman I got the baby from?"