Mr. Jackson opened the locket, and found
it contained a miniature of a lady. He passed it to me, and I gazed at
it with a thrill of emotion? Was it my mother who looked out upon me
from the porcelain? Did she perish in the terrible steamboat calamity
from which I had been so providentially saved? I carried the locket to
the fire, where I could examine more minutely the features of the
person. It was the portrait of a lady not more than twenty-five years
of age. If she was not handsome, there was something inexpressibly
attractive to me in the gentle look of love and tenderness which she
seemed to bestow upon me.

"Do you think this is my mother, Mr. Jackson?" I asked.

"Of course I know nothing about it, but I should suppose it was. Whose
portrait but a mother's would a little child be likely to wear?"

"It mought be, and it mought not be, boy," added Kit.

"It must be!" I exclaimed, so tenderly impressed by the picture that I
was not willing to believe anything else; and I felt that my instinct
was guiding me aright.

[Illustration: UNLOCKING THE CHEST. Page 263.]

"Let us see what else there is in the chest," said the lieutenant. "We
may find something that will give us further light on the subject."

I placed the miniature on the table, and returned to the chest. Mr.
Jackson took from it an old time-stained newspaper. He threw it upon
the floor, as a matter of no consequence; but I picked it up, for I
remembered what I had heard Matt say about a newspaper. But it
contained only a brief paragraph, and alluded to another and fuller
account of the calamity contained in a previous issue.

There was nothing else in the chest that related to me, but I felt that
I had enough. Mr. Jackson said that, if I ever went to St. Louis, I
could find a file of the newspaper of which we had a single copy, and
could find the number containing the names of the saved and the lost at
the burning of the Farringford. The portrait would enable me to
identify my mother, if she were still living, and also to establish my
own identity.

"Here is Matt Rockwood's money," said the lieutenant, as he took from
the bottom of the chest several shot-bags.

"I have some money to add to it," I answered, taking from the
store-room the amount I had received for wood since the death of my
foster-father.

"The old man did a good business here, I should say," added Mr.
Jackson, as he held up the bags in order to estimate their weight.

"We had b