"From this account you will readily understand why I made no enquiries for my other child, believing as I did that it was impossible for her to have lived. My long illness and subsequent absence prevented my hearing the story of the foundling at the Ingledew hospital. Perhaps the news never reached my remote district; at any rate, by the time I returned it had been forgotten among the many heartrending incidents of that dreadful uprising. It was no doubt Lao-ya who had managed to flee with her nursling, though I still cannot understand why she should have travelled the immense distance from Tsi-chin to Tsien-Lou, unless she were trying to reach the home of her parents, who, I understood, came from a different province. Where she was wounded, or what horrors and cruelties she encountered, we shall never know, since she paid for her devotion with her life.
"For fourteen years more I remained in the canton of Szu-chwan, then, owing to my broken health, I was obliged reluctantly to give up my work there and return to England. The death of an uncle had left me in easy circumstances, and, finding the climate of North Wales suited me, I bought Dale Side and settled down there with the intention of writing a book on the many modern problems of China and its future development, a subject on which I thought I was competent to express an opinion.
"It was not until Sylvia spoke of the facsimile of my locket owned by her schoolfellow, and until she had told me the story of how Mercy was left at the Ingledew hospital, that it ever occurred to me that it was possible for my little Mary to have survived the general massacre, and even then I put the idea aside as romantic and absurd. It haunted me, however, to such an extent that I determined to go over to Aberglyn and make a few private enquiries from Miss Kaye on the subject. When I first saw Mercy I was struck at once by her likeness to my dead wife, and the locket soon proved to my entire satisfaction that I was not mistaken in my conjectures. All the dates exactly correspond, and I think there will now be no difficulty in convincing everybody of her identity."
"It is indeed a very strange and happy ending to a sad story," said Miss Kaye, wiping her eyes. "Mercy on her part has gone through a time of trial which I am sure has done its work in helping to form her character. She has been much to us in the school, and I could not hand over a sweeter daughter to a more worthy father."
"Then she is Mary Severn now, instead of Mercy Ingledew!" exclaimed Sylvia.
"She was baptized Mary," said Dr. Severn. "But we will call her Mercy still. No fitter name could have been chosen. It was mercy that saved her life, mercy that preserved her during all the years we were apart, mercy that brought about our marvellous meeting, and it is mercy that has given her back to me at last."
CHAPTER XIX
The Prize Giving
All the school was delighted at Mercy's good fortune, but no one more so than Sylvia. To feel that Dr. Severn's discovery was indirectly due to herself was an unbounded satisfaction.
"I always wanted so much to discover Mercy's friends," she said to Linda. "And isn't it strange that when I believed I'd found her mother it was just a silly mistake, and when I'd really found her father, I didn't suspect it in the least. I never dreamt of Dr. Severn being a relation, even when I saw his locket was the same as Mercy's. You see, Mercy said it was a Chinese charm, so I thought perhaps they were quite common, like the blue-bead tassel he'd been showing you, and anybody who'd been in China might have one. Suppose I hadn't come to stay with you at Whitsuntide, or we hadn't gone to tea that afternoon, you wouldn't have noticed that locket, because Mercy hadn't shown hers to you; and if you'd told Dr. Severn about her being found, he'd never have guessed it was his own Mary. I don't think anything you could have offered me in the whole world would have made me gladder than this!"