At this moment an elderly gentleman approached and Joe introduced him to his brother as Mr. Holmes, his father-in-law, who, while Jim left to arrange for Joe's dinner, told Joe that after he had engaged Jim, the latter had proven himself so reliable that when a few years later his only daughter, Dorothy, who had been sent east to finish her education, returned and had fallen head over heels in love with Jim, he not only gave his paternal blessing, but on their marriage day gave her for a wedding present a deed to the ranch.
Just then the dinner bell rang, and when they came to the house Mrs. James McDonald with her son, a lad of eight, and her daughter, a pretty girl of five, were waiting for them, and after Jim had introduced Joe he called his attention to the fact that his baby girl was named after her Aunt Helen who disappeared so mysteriously, and that the children had the McDonald family mark, the streak of white hair upon their heads.
After dinner Jim called Joe into his private office and pleaded with him to forsake the railroad and make his future home upon the ranch. But it was quite a while before Joe would even listen to his proposition, but when Jim assured his brother that he could not think of having to part with him again he finally consented to the change.
During the remainder of the afternoon Joe was busy writing his resignation and arranging to have his property transferred from Chicago, while Mr. Holmes and Jim were away from the house overseeing the work of the ranch. After Joe had finished his correspondence he took a seat in a rocking chair upon the porch from where he had a grand view of the fertile valley of the Arkansas and the snow capped mountain ranges beyond.
A little later his sister-in-law joined him, and although she sat in another rocker close to Joe's, he found it impossible to engage her in a conversation, try as he might, as she persisted in staring him in the face. Chagrined at what he thought to be an affront, he suddenly blurted out: "Mrs. McDonald, is there something about my face that interests you?" Instead of an answer the lady who had turned a ghastly pallor handed him a small, paper wrapped parcel. Joe opened the same, and then after he hastily scanned its contents he speechlessly stared at his hostess. "Great God in Heaven," exclaimed Joe, breaking the suspense and unable to better express his amazement at the singular turn affairs had taken, while with a trembling hand he drew forth from the paper a small leather purse. "Can it be possible that you, Mrs. McDonald, are 'Babe', the girl I met fifteen years ago in Chicago, and whose timely assistance gave me a start upon the narrow path?" "I am the same girl, Joe," she quietly replied, "and it was for the express purpose of getting a chance to tell you that I am 'Babe' that I stared so rudely into your face, because I knew that now or never had come the climax in the lives of those who had in former days known each other as 'Babe' and 'Dakota Joe'." Then she took the small leather purse out of Joe's trembling hand and again wrapped it in the paper, and after striking a match that she had brought for this purpose, she held the lighted splinter against the paper, and when the hungry flames leaped up she threw the burning parcel upon the lawn below, and while they both watched the fire consume the fateful purse, Mrs. McDonald took Joe's hand into her own and while they pressed a mute, but none the less oath-bound promise to each other, she solemnly said: "For the sake of Jim's happy home and our innocent children, for the sake of the name all of us bear, and the many years I have lived an honorable life to atone for what occurred before the day when I last saw you in Chicago, I plead with you, whom, to my horror, I later discovered to be my own husband's missing brother, to let the past be forgiven, to be buried in silence and be forever hereafter forgotten."
