"Wait for me here a minute, fellows, please," remarked Ralph, as they came to a bookstore where papers from New York were kept on sale.
He dodged inside, leaving Lanky looking at Frank with a puzzled expression on his face.
"I think he's gone to buy a daily paper that makes a specialty of all the latest shipping news. You know Ralph is intensely interested in watching for the arrival of the Empress of Japan at San Francisco. He believes she will be bringing some one for whose coming the poor fellow is anxiously watching—his mother!" said Frank.
"Oh! yes, you were telling me about it," murmured Lanky. "He was brought up by the Wests in the village of Scardale as their son, and only lately learned that he had been adopted, taken from the poorhouse by the couple when a baby. And about a year ago he began to receive some money on the first of every month, with a mysterious note telling him to get an education such as he yearned to receive."
Frank nodded his head.
"Ralph has taken me into his confidence almost from the beginning," he said. "I went with him to see a man named Ben Davis who was dying. He had an idea that this man might be his father; but it turned out otherwise. Then he discovered that the lawyer in New York who sent the monthly sums was my Uncle Jim."
"Yes," said Lanky, eagerly, "I remember the time he came up here last Fall to see you. I guess it was then he admitted that he had been employed by a gentleman named Arnold Musgrove, who was traveling in Europe with his widowed sister, a Mrs. John Langworthy. And it turned out that Ralph must be the long-lost child of that same lady—that the brother had had the baby stolen for some selfish purpose. It was all just like a story."
"And Uncle Jim followed them through Europe and to India and China, for they were great travelers," said Frank, slowly. "The last we heard from him was a cablegram from Japan, saying that the lady knew all, and that he was about to sail with her for America. Now you understand just why Ralph is wild to learn if the steamer got in yesterday, when due."
"Here he comes out, and from the look on his face I guess she arrived," muttered Lanky, trying to appear as though he and Frank had been talking of matters concerning Columbia's chances in the coming hockey contest.
"It's all right. The steamer got in yesterday, Frank," cried Ralph, his face beaming with delight.