The next instant a great, wild, happy cry rent the air, which the angels must have heard and wept rejoicingly over; and he heard the joyful cry:
"Yes; it is my child—my own little, lost child!"
Robing himself hurriedly, Jack quickly opened the door; but his partner was standing there, and thrust him back.
Jack knew of the loss of the little one, and his partner explained to him how mysteriously it had been found, and by Jack's old sweetheart, Dorothy Glenn.
"Then the child she had here was not her own?" cried Jack, white as death.
And as the whole story began to dawn upon him, Jack buried his fair, handsome, haggard face in his hands, and wept for joy.
But when his partner touched upon the subject of Dorothy's being accused of poisoning Miss Staples, he sprang up hastily and grasped the other's hand.
"The accusation was not true," cried Jack. "Dorothy was not guilty. A girl whom Jessie had known for years, and who was at her bedside, did the deed. She wrote a full confession. I found it under my plate at the dinner-table. Nadine Holt has fled to escape just punishment. Oh, how I wish I could find poor, abused Dorothy, to tell her the truth!"
And when he found Dorothy was beneath that roof, and at Jessie Staples' bedside, his joy knew no bounds.
He sought her there at once to crave her pardon for the unjust suspicion, and no one ever knew just exactly what passed between the sick girl lying there, Dorothy, and her old lover.