“No real harm, Alfy. And I hoped for Aunt Betty’s sake that there was an inheritance assured. She is so worried about Bellevieu. The mortgages and taxes seem to eat up everything. I have given her, of course, all of my earnings, but she says things are still going badly.”
“What are we to do now?” asked Alfy, seeking another subject. “Go home?”
“Mr. Ludlow has made some arrangements for Ruth to sing and for me to play here in San Francisco, at private houses of the rich. As you know, all of the others except Mr. Dauntrey, have gone east, their contracts expired.”
Their conversation was interrupted, now, by Aunt Betty, who came into the room.
“Here is a much belated letter,” she exclaimed, “the envelope all marked up with forwarding addresses. It must have been traveling about for quite some time.”
“It’s from Jim,” cried Dorothy, and quickly broke the seal. The postmark the letter bore was a date fully two months back, and the first few lines were, to the recipient very pleasing ones, till she remembered that they were written before their late disagreement. But the major part of the letter bore upon a subject that concerned them all, and this she read aloud.
“It’s about Lem,” cried Dorothy. “Mr. Van Zandt has made some quite wonderful discoveries. And just to think, it all comes about through that sampler you found, Alfy. But let me read:
“I have some interesting news concerning Lemuel Haley, the boy your camping party found in the thick woods crying that night. It was a lucky thing for the boy that Mrs. Babcock gave Alfaretta that sampler, for from just such a simple little thing as that, we have been able to trace all of Lem’s family history, bringing out a sufficient, although I will not say good, reason for his uncle’s mistreatment of him.
“Lemuel Haley’s mother was Hannah Woodrow. The very same girl that summered with Mrs. Babcock, and remained there attending the little village school for one whole year. She was a very delicate girl, not particularly pretty and very shy. She had large limpid brown eyes, and was of small build.
“She returned to Baltimore, after her year in the mountains, and lived the regulation life of a wealthy farmer’s daughter. There Mr. Haley, a traveling salesman, so he told her family, fell in love with her or—her money, and when both her father and mother died quite suddenly, the traveling salesman made it his business to woo the lonely girl. He wished to marry her immediately and protect her, so he told her, and was so persistent that the poor distracted, grief-stricken girl finally gave him her promise, and within a month of her parents’ death married him. At once he proceeded to dissipate her fortune, and, to make a long story short, the poor girl died when Lem was born. The father was later killed by an accident.