"Not all of it," added Mr. Lamar. "And now we can pity and sympathize with you as we could not before."
"No; I deserve neither pity nor sympathy," groaned my poor father, trembling violently. "If I had not been drunk I should have saved my child."
"Perhaps it is all for the best, since the child was saved," said I.
"It is impossible!" exclaimed Farringford. "I cannot believe it. There was no one in that lonely region; and, if my child had reached the shore, it must have perished more miserably of starvation than in the water."
"You say your wife did not undress the child, because you expected to reach the fort that evening," I continued. "Do you know what clothes it had on?"
"I ought to know, for I have tearfully recalled the occasion when I last pressed it to my heart, after supper that awful night. It wore a little white cambric dress, with bracelets of coral on the shoulders."
"Anything on the neck?"
"Yes; a coral necklace, to which was attached a locket containing a miniature of my wife."
"In what kind of a shawl was it wrapped when you placed it on the door?" I asked, as I unlocked the bureau drawer in which I had placed the precious relics of my childhood.
While he was describing it I took the shawl from the drawer.