With a little sob Willa went to meet her, and in an instant the two were crying in each other's arms.
The older woman was the first to recover herself.
"Oh, my dear, to think that I didn't know you! I ought to have seen from the first—your mother's hair and eyes——"
"But you know me now!" Willa smiled through her tears. "You could swear to me by that scar, couldn't you? You see, there is someone trying to claim I'm not the girl you knew as Billie, and I have no other proof. I never fancied that little scar meant anything; I haven't thought of it in years. You saved my life once, at the risk of your own—will you help me now?"
"Will I?" Klondike Kate wiped her eyes. "I'll go to the last ditch for you! I've lived right for fifteen years, and I guess my word is as good as the next one's. You just take me to whoever says you're not little Billie and I'll prove their lie before any court on earth.—That reminds me; I have something for you. It won't help make good your claim, for they might say an impostor got it from me, but it's yours and you ought to have it."
She mounted the rickety stairs to the loft, and in her absence Willa slowly put on her stocking and shoe once more. Her own inner conviction had been justified and an elation almost solemn in its intensity filled her heart. She was Willa Murdaugh! She could prove her right to the name which had been wrested from her!
When Klondike Kate descended she bore in her hands a folded paper, yellowed and worn, and a tarnished locket on a bit of faded, scorched blue ribbon.
"I was sick when Gentleman Geoff left town with you or I'd have tied the locket on you myself," she said. "It's got both their pictures in it, mother and father. See!"
She opened the case, and Willa gazed through renewed tears at the two young faces vibrant with life which smiled back at her: the man's thin and intellectual with the eyes of a dreamer and the chiseled lips of a poet; the woman's stronger and more practical, her gaze sweet and level, her dark hair in a soft cloud about her low, broad forehead.
Willa pressed the locket convulsively to her breast in the first overwhelming tide of possession which had ever swept over her. These were her own people, flesh of her flesh! They had dared to love against insuperable odds, and, succumbing at last, had left her as the pledge of that love! She would prove worthy of them!