esently the two met, and each looked steadily into the other's face,
as if wondering who the other might be.

"You received a letter two days ago?" said the woman.

"Yes," was his reply.

"I wrote it." Simple as the words were, they were uttered with a sob.

He saw that she was under very strong emotion, and noted the yearning
look in her eyes.

"You have wondered all your life who your father and mother are?" and
the woman controlled her voice with difficulty. "I know you have. You
want to know all about them, don't you?"

"I shouldn't have come here if I hadn't!" was his reply.

"I'm your mother!" said the woman.

He looked at her curiously. He had been thinking, ever since they had
met, whether this might not be so; nevertheless the news came to him as
a kind of shock. A woman with sad eyes and an expression of
unsatisfied yearning in her face; yet handsome withal.

"Do you not believe it?" she asked. "My boy! my boy! I'm your mother,
and, if I have kept silent about it, it has been for love of you!"

And she held out her hands towards him.

It seemed as though something touched his heart, as though his whole
being thrilled with a recognition of the truth, and, in a way he could
not understand, a great love for this lonely woman sprang suddenly into
his heart.

"Yes, I believe you are my mother."

"I have come to tell you everything, Paul," she said. "It's a sad
story, but I believe you'll understand."

"Yes," he replied, "I shall understand!"

The woman looked at him, still with the same expression of tender
yearning in her eyes.

"It's a hard question to ask," she said, "but can you feel towards me
as a laddie should feel to his mother?"

"Yes," he replied, "I do."

"Then call me 'Mother,' and kiss me!" she cried passionately.

"Mother!" he said, and held her close to him.

A few minutes later she began to tell him the things which for years he
had been longing to know, and concerning which gossip had been rife.

"I want to know, mother," he said, "who my father is, where I was born,
and why the truth has been so long kept from me."

"Born," she said, and her face became hard; "you were born in a
workhouse, and your father would call himself a gentleman, and we were
married in Scotland!"

A bright light came into the youth's eyes at the last part of the
sentence. "But is my father alive?" he asked eagerly.

"I do not know," she replied; "I think he must be. I feel sure he is,