“'Donald!'
“She fell back, but he caught her in his arms and kissed her lips a dozen times, with a half-savage gladness, crying and laughing hysterically, as women do.
“When the policeman had reached the pair, the woman had seen the last of this world.
“Afterward we found that she had been discharged from the municipal hospital, where she had been in the smallpox ward two weeks before; and we surmised that she had virtually had nothing to eat since then.
“At the station-house the man explained that the woman was his runaway wife. He had started in search of her two years before, with no other clue as to her whereabouts than the knowledge that she had sailed for America with a man named Ferriss—”
“What?” cried Max. “Was the name Archibald Ferriss? That was the name of the man who died in the Denver lazaretto—”
But Max was stopped by Breffny, who almost shouted in excitement:
“And the name of the son of McKeown & Ferriss, of Glasgow, in whose shipyard was employed as timekeeper the Donald Wilson—”
“Donald Wilson was the name of the man who met his wife that night in front of the Midnight Mission,” said I, in further confirmation.
It was remarkable. One of the three chapters of this tragic story had entered into the experience of each of us three who sat there emptying stone mugs. Now, for the first time, was the story complete to each of us.