"Perhaps that was best."
"I'm inclined to think so myself," I agreed.
"There's one thing, though," he added suddenly. "Curtiss has no reason to be ashamed of his birth."
I looked at him with quick interest.
"Then you've discovered——"
"Yes; the minister who married Mary Jarvis and Boyd Endicott. I couldn't rest after you showed me that picture—after I knew that Mary Jarvis had had a child. I felt that I must find out—for her sake, as well as for my own. And so I set systematically to work. It was really not difficult, for there were not more than six or eight places where the ceremony could possibly have been performed. I took them one after another, and soon found the right one—you see, I had the date, approximately. Her story was true in every detail. They had driven to Clearwater, about five miles north of Plainfield, a little village of two or three hundred inhabitants. The minister who married them is still living. He showed me the record, and he remembered the affair distinctly. The night was a very bad one, and he had been aroused from sleep by a loud knocking at the door. He had gone down, thinking that it was some neighbour come to summon him to the bedside of some one taken suddenly ill, and was surprised to find a handsome young fellow standing on the doorstep. He explained his errand in a few words, and ten minutes later, the thing was done. The minister's wife was the only witness. The bride was very frightened and more than once seemed about to faint, but managed to pull through, and was driven away with her husband a few minutes after the ceremony has been performed."
The clergyman's face was glowing with satisfaction.
"It was a great thing to me," he added, "to be able to prove that Mary Jarvis had told her father the truth."
"It seems strange," I said, "that he never made any attempt to verify it."
"Ah, but he did," broke in Dr. Schuyler quickly. "He did verify it. At least it could have been no one else in my opinion, from the description given me by the minister at Clearwater. He was there and saw the record only a few days after that Christmas Eve on which his daughter attempted to run away."