u about the
circumstances?"

Edgar shook his head. "No; I only know that I was born there."

"I should have thought that he would have told you the story," she said;
"for there were many knew of it, and you would be sure to hear it sooner
or later."

"I do not want to hear of it," he said, leaping to his feet. "If there
was anything my father wanted me to know he would tell it to me at once.
You do not suppose I want to hear it from anyone else?"

He was making for the door, when she said, "Then you do not know that
you are not his son?"

He stopped abruptly. "Don't know I am not his son!" he repeated. "You
must be mad."

"I am not mad at all," she said. "You are not his son. Not any relation
in the world to him. Sit down again and I will tell you the story."

He mechanically obeyed, feeling overwhelmed with the news he had heard.
Then as she told him how the children had become mixed, and how Captain
Clinton had decided to bring them up together until he should be able to
discover by some likeness to himself or wife which was his son, Edgar
listened to the story with a terrible feeling of oppression stealing
over him. He could not doubt that she was speaking the truth, for if it
were false it could be contradicted at once. There were circumstances
too which seemed to confirm it. He recalled now, that often in their
younger days his father and mother had asked casual visitors if they saw
any likeness between either of the children to them; and he specially
remembered how closely Colonel Winterbottom, who had been major in his
father's regiment, had scrutinized them both, and how he had said, "No,
Clinton, for the life of me I cannot see that one is more like you and
your wife than the other." And now this woman had told him that he was
not their son; and he understood that she must be this sergeant's wife,
and that if he was not Captain Clinton's son she must be his mother.

"You are Mrs. Humphreys, I suppose?" he said in a hard, dry voice when
she had ceased speaking.

"I am your mother," she said. He moved as if struck with sudden pain as
she spoke, but said nothing.

"I sacrificed myself for your sake," she went on after a pause. "I had
them both, and it seemed to me hard that my boy should grow up to be a
boy of the regiment, with nothing better to look forward to than to
enlist in it some day, while the other, no better in any respect than
him, should grow up to be a rich man, with everything the heart