"Mr. Clark wired you to find out just that point."
"Did he? I never received the despatch. Hadn't I told him the date of our Emily's birth?
"He has a crow to pick with you over that."
"Too bad. Well, I moseyed around some more, and the trail led me back to Millsboro again, where I ought to have found the solution in the first place if I had been more persevering. I came across an old woman in Millsboro who had been Emily Leonard's bridesmaid when she married Julian Smith. That sent me off to the county seat and there I found it all set down in black and white;—Emily Leonard, adopted daughter of Asa Wentworth and daughter of Peter and Judith (Clark) Leonard. There was everything I wanted."
"You knew she had been adopted by a Wentworth?"
"I found that out before I left Nebraska."
"What was the date of the marriage?"
"1868. She was eighteen. Two years later her only child, a son, Leonard, was born, and she died—"
"Her son Leonard! Leonard Smith!" exclaimed Mrs. Morton suddenly. "Do you suppose—" she hesitated, looking at her father.
He raised his eyebrows doubtfully, then turning to Stanley he inquired: