It was a scene of rejoicing at Oak Farm, and the moving picture girls came in for a big share of praise. For had it not been for the fact that Alice had seen the paper containing the account of the missing girl and saved it, the identity of Mildred might not have been disclosed for some time.
Finally, she was told what had happened; that for four years she had been another person—Estelle Brown—a name she had taken after the awakening following the railroad accident because of some kink in the brain that retained the memory of the doll.
"Then Lieutenant Varley was right, he must have seen you in Portland," said Alice, when explanations were being made.
"He must have," admitted Mildred. "But I don't understand how it happened."
Later on it was all made clear.
Mildred Passamore, the daughter of a wealthy family, living temporarily at the Palace Hotel, in San Francisco, had started on a trip to visit relatives in Seattle. She was well supplied with money.
The train Mildred was on was wrecked near Portland, Oregon, and the girl received a blow on her head that caused her to lose her sense of identity completely. She did not seem to be hurt, and she was not in need of medical aid. Without assistance, she got on the relief train that took the injured in to Portland, and there it was that Lieutenant Varley saw her in the station.
Through some vagary of her brain, Mildred imagined she wanted to go to New York, and, as she had plenty of money, she bought a ticket for that city, the one to Seattle having been lost. Lieutenant Varley had helped her and, though he suspected something was wrong with the young lady the impression with him was not very strong until it was too late to be of assistance to her.
So, her identity completely lost, Mildred started on her trip across the continent. What happened on that journey she never could recollect clearly. That she got on the Great Lakes and then went to Boston was established. The reason for that was that, as a child, she had lived there. This accounted for the toilet set her mother had given her, and for the recollection of the monument and the historic places.
Why she was attracted to moving pictures could only be guessed at, but she "broke in," and "made good." Her ability to ride was easily explained. Her father owned a big stock farm, and Mildred had ridden since a child. But all this, as well as other remembrances of her younger days, was lost after the injury to her head in the railroad accident. She retained but one strongly marked memory—the name of her doll, the name which she took for her own.