ve something for you. It won't help make good your
claim, for they might say an impostor got it from me, but it's yours
and you ought to have it."

She mounted the rickety stairs to the loft, and in her absence Willa
slowly put on her stocking and shoe once more. Her own inner
conviction had been justified and an elation almost solemn in its
intensity filled her heart. She was Willa Murdaugh! She could prove
her right to the name which had been wrested from her!

When Klondike Kate descended she bore in her hands a folded paper,
yellowed and worn, and a tarnished locket on a bit of faded, scorched
blue ribbon.

"I was sick when Gentleman Geoff left town with you or I'd have tied
the locket on you myself," she said. "It's got both their pictures in
it, mother and father. See!"

She opened the case, and Willa gazed through renewed tears at the two
young faces vibrant with life which smiled back at her: the man's thin
and intellectual with the eyes of a dreamer and the chiseled lips of a
poet; the woman's stronger and more practical, her gaze sweet and
level, her dark hair in a soft cloud about her low, broad forehead.

Willa pressed the locket convulsively to her breast in the first
overwhelming tide of possession which had ever swept over her. These
were her own people, flesh of her flesh! They had dared to love
against insuperable odds, and, succumbing at last, had left her as the
pledge of that love! She would prove worthy of them!

"It was taken from her neck when they found her after the fire,"
Klondike Kate said softly. "Jake gave it to me to keep for
you.--Here's what she prized most of anything she had; she put it in my
hands herself to keep for her."

The yellowed paper, unfolded, proved to be the certificate of marriage
of Violet Ashton and Ralph Murdaugh, dated January 2, 1896.

The two talked long within the little shack, and when Willa emerged at
last the sun had disappeared behind a bank of level, leaden cloud and
the still cold which precedes a snowfall had settled down upon the
valley.

Since her arrival the night before Willa had fought resolutely against
the vague memories which seemed to assail her at every turn, fearing
the snare of mental suggestion, but now she strove wistfully to foster
a sense of nearness and familiarity with the dreary scene.

The reaction from her triumphant hour had come, and with it a forlorn
hopelessness of spirit. What did it matter, after all? Outcast