“Yes, your mother! Oh, how glad I am that I have found you!”
“I’m glad, too,” said Bob, brokenly. His heart was jumping so much he could not say a great deal. “But it’s all so wonderful,” he added, after a moment.
“So it is.”
“Where have you been all these years? Why didn’t you come to my Uncle Robert’s house?”
“It’s a long story. When your father was killed, I nearly lost my mind. When I recovered, I was told by a man, who I afterward found out was Dix’s tool, that you had been stolen by the Indians. I made a long search, lasting years. Then I was coming to your uncle’s home here in the East, when I learned that he was dead. It was quite by accident that I discovered the trick which had been played on me, and I at once set out to find you.”
“And I have been hunting for you,” replied Bob, with a beaming face. “I understand it all now. Dix was playing a double game—trying to keep me out of the way at one end and you out of the way at the other. But he has been foiled, just as he deserved.”
When Dix was confronted by Bob and his newly-found parent, he could not say a word. He had played a desperate game to the finish and lost.
Bob conducted his mother to a hotel, and here the two spent a happy night.
One of the first callers in the morning was Frank. He was astonished when Bob introduced Mrs. Perry.
“So you won’t be a nobody any longer, Bob, eh?” he smiled.