"How long?"
"Six years ago. She was fourteen then," said Gabriel, taking the case in his hand and brushing the glass fondly with his palm. "Thar warn't no puttier gal in all Missouri," he added, with fraternal pride, looking down upon the picture with moistened eyes. "Eh—what did you say?"
The stranger had uttered a few words hastily in a foreign tongue. But they were apparently complimentary, for when Gabriel looked up at him with an inquiring glance, he was smiling and saying, "Beautiful! Angelic! Very pretty!" with eyes still fixed upon the picture. "And it is like—ah, I see the brother's face, too," he said, gravely, comparing Gabriel's face with the picture. Gabriel looked pleased. Any nature less simple than his would have detected the polite fiction. In the square, honest face of the brother there was not the faintest suggestion of the delicate, girlish, poetical oval before him.
"It is precious," said the stranger: "and it is all, ha?"
"All?" echoed Gabriel, inquiringly.
"You have nothing more?"
"No."
"A line of her writing, a letter, her private papers would be a treasure, eh?"
"She left nothing," said Gabriel, simply, "but her clothes. You know she put on a boy's suit—Johnny's clothes—when she left. Thet's how it allus puzzles me thet they knew who she was, when they came across the poor child dead."
The stranger did not speak, and Gabriel went on—