k to the backbone. Show me another
girl who would have undertook to corral a bank robber as she did. I
don't wonder she thought that was my occupation. I certainly look
rough enough--" Suddenly his roving eyes fell upon the timid,
shrinking Gloriana, so depressed at the way matters had turned out that
she could scarcely keep back the scalding tears. If it had not been
for her, Tabitha would never have gone on such a wild-goose chase. Why
hadn't she kept her suspicions to herself?

"What's your name?" demanded the stranger so abruptly that he seemed
positively rude.

"Gloriana Holliday," she managed to articulate.

"Did you ever have an Uncle Jerry?"

"If I did, he never came near us that I can remember," she candidly
replied.

The purple of his face deepened. "That's right, too," he muttered.
"But your mother ran away to get married."

"And her folks told her never to let them see her face again,"
supplemented Gloriana bitterly.

"Was her name Weller at one time? But of course it was. There
couldn't be two people on earth look as much alike as she and you
unless they were mother and daughter; and besides, she married a
Holliday,--Jack Holliday."

Gloriana nodded.

"Then, my girl, I'm your Uncle Jerry, and if you didn't catch
your bank robber, you made a pretty good haul anyway. Your
mother--she--she's--dead, isn't she? And your father? You're an
orphan----"

"She's not any longer!" Tabitha broke in savagely. "We've adopted her
and she's my sister."

"Oh! Well, that simplifies matters, too, for I'm a bachelor and have
no _home_ to offer, but-- Say, I want to talk with you. Where's your
adopted father? Not in town now? Well, isn't there some place we can
go where we won't be gawked at by all these hoodlums? Bring your
black-haired sister,--my jailer. I certainly do admire pluck."

At this broad hint, the curious crowd reluctantly withdrew, and left
the trio alone at the pesthouse threshold. Standing there bare-headed
with the waning sunlight glinting through the heavy, red locks,
Gloriana told what she could remember of the pitiful struggle of her
parents, their deaths, and her unhappy lot until the scholarship at Ivy
Hall had opened the way to better things.

So affected was the bluff stranger by the sad tale that he made no
effort to check the tears which filled his eyes and rolled down his
cheeks. "Well, the past is passed," he said when the story was done,
"and we can't do anyt