“Alice!”
Mabel’s heart gave a great bound.
“That is mamma’s name, mine is Mabel.”
“Lead me to her,” he said, hoarsely.
Mabel quickly ran before him into the house exclaiming:
“Oh, mamma! I think it is Uncle Ben.”
Mrs. Ross would have fallen had she not been caught by the strong arms of the stalwart brother whom she had not seen for twenty years. And then it all came out. Mabel’s secret was a secret no longer.
Captain Ben Grayson, old soldier, and retired ranch owner, had come back after twenty years of life in the west to hunt for his sister, his only known relative, whom he had last seen when she was a girl like Mabel. He had been told a Miss Grayson had died from the ravages of an epidemic that swept through the school she had been placed at; and so, when the war ended, he went out west instead of returning to New York as he should have done but for that false report. But he had lately heard, from an old school-friend, he had come across, that she was living, had married, and become a widow, and that was all the information he could get.
By the simplest chance he had stopped at Fairmount. Shortly after rising that morning, he was startled by a parrot hung outside the window of the room next to his, calling out,—“Cheer up! cheer up!” and shortly after,—“‘On Linden when the sun was low,’ ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! Poor Ben!”
“Well,” said Uncle Ben, “you can imagine the effect. I knew my parrot could not be living yet; but I thought to myself, that parrot must have learned from my old one or from you, Alice, and I hastened to make the acquaintance of my next-door neighbor, and so I have found you.”