“No!” cried Maggie, now almost crying with fright, and clutching her treasure.
By this time some of the people around had noticed the scene, and the hotel-keeper came up.
“What is it, Mr. Bartlett?”
The gentleman tried to calm himself, seeing that they had become the centre of a curious crowd, and then replied:—
“Why, I find on this child the double of a locket I gave my sister years ago, a sister who has disappeared and whom I have been seeking for years; I wanted to examine it—but I seem to have frightened her; will you, if you know her, ask her to let me look at it? If it is the one I seek, it should open by a secret spring, and have a boy’s face inside. If it should help me to find my long-lost sister!” He paused, much moved.
Mr. Wild, the hotel-keeper, calmed Maggie, and asked her to let the gentleman examine it.
As he took it in his hand, he murmured, “The very same! here is a mark I well remember. Now if I can open it!” He held it a moment when suddenly it sprang open, to Maggie’s amazement, and there—sure enough—was a faded, old-fashioned daguerreotype of a boy’s face.
“It is the very one!” he exclaimed in excitement. “Now where is this Miss—What did you say her name was? Where could she have got it?”
“She told me,” said Maggie, trembling, “that her brother gave it to her.”
“So I did,” said the man eagerly; “but the name! can she have changed her name?”