should never have
sought him out--but one can know whether--whether _it_ lived or died."

"He has with him," said Baird, "a girl of nineteen who is his adopted
daughter. I heard it to-night. She is said to be a lovely girl who is in
love with a lovely boy who is De Willoughby's nephew. She is happy."

"She is happy," murmured Latimer, biting his livid lips. He could not
bring himself back to the hour he was living in. He could only see again
the bare little room--he could hear the cries of terrified anguish. "It
seems strange," he murmured, "that Margery's child should be happy."

CHAPTER XXXIII

It was not difficult to discover the abiding place of the De Willoughby
claimants. The time had come when there were few who did not know who
occupied the upper floor of Miss Burford's house near the Circle. Miss
Burford herself had gradually become rather proud of her boarders, and,
as the interest in the case increased, felt herself becoming a prominent
person.

"If the claim goes through, the De Willoughby family will be very
wealthy," she said, genteelly. "They will return to their Southern home,
no doubt, and restore it to its fawmah magnificence. Mr. Rupert De
Willoughby will be lawd of the mannah."

She spent many hours--which she felt to be very aristocratic--in
listening to Uncle Matt's stories of the "old De Willoughby place," the
rice-fields in "South Ca'llina," and the "thousands of acres of gol'
mines" in the mountains. There was a rich consolation in mere
conversation on the subject of glories which had once had veritable
substance, and whose magnitude might absolutely increase if fortune was
kind. But it was not through inquiry that Latimer discovered the
whereabouts of the man who shared his secret. In two days' time they met
face to face on the steps of the Capitol.

Latimer was going down them; big Tom was coming up. The latter was lost
in thought on his affairs, and was not looking at such of his fellow-men
as passed him. Suddenly he found himself one or two steps below someone
who held out a hand and spoke in a low voice.

"De Willoughby!" the stranger exclaimed, and Tom lifted his eyes and
looked straight into those of the man he had seen last nineteen years
before in the cabin at Blair's Hollow.

"Do you know me again?" the man asked. "It's a good many years since we
met, and I am not as easy to recognise as you."

"Yes, I know you," answered big Tom, grasping the outstretched hand
kin