CONCLUSION.
The narrative in the letter went on to recite that the man Harold Stevens had taken a cold, owing to his experience when washed overboard, and the fatal disease consumption had ensued. He sent for Jake Canfield as a man whom he believed to be honest and faithful, and to him he confided his only child, stating that the mother had died in South America and the child had been in the hands of friends whom he feared. He stated that he had secured possession of his child, and desired to consign her to Jake. He gave many directions concerning the child, but enjoined that she should not know she was an heiress until she was twenty-five years of age. The letter did not state why this determination had been reached by the father. Jack took possession of the child and the fortune, and for reasons never explained the father desired that her real name and identity and parentage should be concealed until her twenty-fifth birthday. Jake took charge of the child and the fortune, and two weeks later the father died, and strange to say, about the same time Jake's son died, and when he took the little child to his home he represented her as the daughter of his son, hoping thereby to conceal her real parentage more effectively. Then came the time when he took the child and placed her in charge of perfect strangers, giving reasons that do not concern the interests of our story, but based on the idea of his second-hand family and their evil feeling toward his supposed granddaughter. In the meantime Jake had been worried about the fortune deposited with him. He was an old man, led a perilous life going to sea, and he finally determined to deposit the money with some one whom he knew would be honest. He had gone to school with Mr. Townsend's parents, as he originally hailed from New England. He made inquiries about the young banker and concluded that he would be a safe man with whom to deposit the money as trustee for the child, and he did go out in his boat as a "blind" and sailed in her to New York, where he disposed of her, having determined to let it be thought that he was dead and thus escape his second-hand family—we use the term second-hand family. The above is the gist of the narrative. What else may concern our narrative will be recorded incidentally as Jack had developed. As our readers know, Mr. Canfield was killed on the railroad and never spoke a word, and owing to the fact that he was supposed to have been drowned no inquiry was made concerning him, and thus for forty years all memory of him had been lost until revived by our hero through the incidents as we have narrated them.
Having finished the reading of the letter, Jack said:
"Well, sir, all is clear now."
"Yes, and it is wonderful how the facts have been developed."
"I have plain sailing now," said Jack.
"You will find this girl, Amalie Stevens?"
"I will, or her heir."
"There is some satisfaction, Mr. Wonderful, in starting out with a perfect clue."
Jack laughed and said: