The little that she could tell threw no light upon the mystery of her hiding-place, but it was all that they ever knew.
“I used to pray and pray,” said Daisy, “but God didn’t seem to hear me at all. And when I woke in that little room that smelled so bad—it was worse than the other—I just felt I must make God hear, so I prayed, oh, so loud, and then the door broke in, and that nice, funny man picked me up, and there was Mamma; and only think! God might have let me out long before if I had only prayed loud enough.”
When Leslie learned her own story, and was brought face to face with her father, her cup of joy was full indeed. She was at anchor at last, with some one to love her beyond all others; with some one to love and to render happy.
“Oh,” she said, “to know that my dear adopted parents were after all my own kindred; my uncle and my aunt! What caprice of their evil natures prompted those wretches to do me this one kindness?”
“They knew where to find the Ulimans,” said her father, “and knew that they were wealthy. It was the easiest way to dispose of you.”
“I suppose so,” she assented, sighing as she thought of those dear ones dead; smiling again as she looked in the face of her new-found father.
In the present confidence, the happiness and peace, that surrounded her, Winnie French could not continue her perverse role, nor, indeed, was Alan the man to permit it. She had let him see into her heart, in that moment when he had seemed in such deadly peril, and he smiled down her pretty after-defiance.
“You shall not recant,” he said laughingly; “for your own sake, I dare not allow it. A young woman who so rashly espouses the cause of a swain, simply because he has the prospect of a pair of handcuffs staring him in the face, is unreliable, sadly out of balance. She needs a guardian and I—”
“Need an occupation,” retorted Winnie, maliciously. “Don’t doom yourself to gray hairs, sir; repent.”
“It’s too late,” he declared; and they ceased to argue the question.