hn Poindexter, father of Eva, had for a friend
in early life one Amos Cadwalader."

"Amos!" repeated Mr. Gryce, with an odd look.

"Yes, and that this Amos had a son, Felix."

"Ah!"

"You see, sir, we must be on the right track; coincidences cannot extend
through half a dozen names."

"You are right. It is I who have made a mistake in drawing my
conclusions too readily. Let us hear about this Amos. You gathered
something of his history, no doubt."

"All that was possible, sir. It is closely woven in with that of
Poindexter, and presents one feature which may occasion you no surprise,
but which, I own, came near nonplussing me. Though the father of Felix,
his name was not Adams. I say was not, for he has been dead six months.
It was Cadwalader. And Felix went by the name of Cadwalader, too, in the
early days of which I have to tell, he and a sister whose name----"

"Well?"

"Was Evelyn."

"Sweetwater, you are an admirable fellow. So the mystery is ours."

"The history, not the mystery; that still holds. Shall I relate what I
know of those two families?"

"At once: I am as anxious as if I were again twenty-three and had been
in your shoes instead of my own for the last three days."

"Very well, sir. John Poindexter and Amos Cadwalader were, in their
early life, bosom friends. They had come from Scotland together and
settled in Montgomery in the thirties. Both married there, but John
Poindexter was a prosperous man from the first, while Cadwalader had
little ability to support a family, and was on the verge of bankruptcy
when the war of the rebellion broke out and he enlisted as a soldier.
Poindexter remained at home, caring for his own family and for the two
children of Cadwalader, whom he took into his own house. I say his own
family, but he had no family, save a wife, up to the spring of '80. Then
a daughter was born to him, the Eva who has just married Thomas Adams.
Cadwalader, who was fitted for army life, rose to be a captain; but he
was unfortunately taken prisoner at one of the late battles and confined
in Libby Prison, where he suffered the tortures of the damned till he
was released, in 1865, by a forced exchange of prisoners. Broken, old,
and crushed, he returned home, and no one living in the town at that
time will ever forget the day he alighted from the cars and took his way
up the main street. For not having been fortunate enough, or unfortunate
enough, perhaps, to receive any communication fr