"My cousin! Oh! what can you mean?" gasped the bewildered Darry.
"I'll tell you without beating around the bush, then. You are no longer the poor homeless waif you used to believe yourself."
"No, that is true, thanks to dear old Abner and Nancy," murmured Darry, loyal to his good friends in this hour.
"But there is someone who has a better claim upon your affection than either Abner or Nancy, kind-hearted though they undoubtedly are. It is your own mother, Darry!" exclaimed the young man, leaning over closer as he said that word of magic.
"Mother! My mother! How sweet that sounds! But tell me how can this be? Who am I, and where is she? How did you find it out, and, oh! Paul, are you sure, quite sure? A disappointment after this would be hard to bear."
"Have no fears, Darry, there is no longer the slightest shadow of a doubt. The minute my aunt set her eyes on that crescent-shaped mark on your arm she knew beyond all question that Heaven had granted her prayers of years, and in this marvelous way restored her only child to her again. She saw you leap overboard to save that little child, and she recognized in your face the look she remembered so well as marking the countenance of her husband, now long since dead. She says you are his living picture as a boy."
"I remember some lady seizing hold of my arm after they dragged me aboard the lifeboat, but at the time I believed it must be the mother of the child, and I was anxious to get back to my place, for the boat might upset with one oar missing. And that was—my mother?"
How softly, how tenderly, he spoke the word, as though it might be something he had only dared dream about, and had difficulty in realizing now that he could claim what nearly all other boys had, a parent.
"Yes, that was my dear Aunt Elizabeth. I wired her away down in South America, where she was visiting cousins, and it has taken her quite a while to get here. She had to change steamers twice, and meant to come back here from New York by rail, when a strange freak of fortune sent that vessel upon the reef, and placed you in the lifeboat that went to the rescue. After this I shall stand in awe of the mysterious workings of Providence, since this beats anything I ever heard of. I could see something familiar in your looks, and after hearing your story sent for her on a chance. That was why I dared not tell you any more than I did. If I had only known about the history of that scar on your arm I would have been positive. She asked me immediately about it, and when I told her it was surely there she fainted again."
"My mother! how strange it seems. Go on please, Paul," murmured the boy, reaching out and possessing himself of the other's hand, as though its touch gave him assurance that this was not one of his tantalizing dreams.