er to, and stood by the
roadside, watching us. 'Doctor,' I said, 'that child is not like the
others, and she has been badly used. I want her--I want to take her home
with me.'

"'Bless your kind heart, dear lady,' he replied, laughing, and we were
almost at home before I convinced him that I was in earnest. He would
not let me go there again, but the very next day, he went, late in the
afternoon, and brought her to me after dark, so that no one might see.
East Lancaster has always made the most of every morsel of gossip.

"The poor little soul was hungry, frightened, and oh, so dirty! I gave
her a bath, cut off her hair, which was matted close to her head, fed
her, and put her into a clean bed. The bruises on her body would have
brought tears from a stone. I sat by her until she was asleep, and then
went down to interview the Doctor, who was reading in the library.

"He said that the people who had her were more than glad to get rid of
her, and hoped that they might never see her again. Nothing had been
paid toward her support for a long time, and they considered themselves
victimised.

"Of course I put detectives at work upon the case and soon found out all
there was to know. She was the daughter of a play-actress, whose stage
name was Iris Temple. Her husband deserted her a few months after their
marriage, and when the child was born, she was absolutely destitute.
Finally, she found work, but she could not take the child with her, and
so Iris does not remember her mother at all. For six years she paid
these people a small sum for the care of the child, then remittances
ceased, and abuse began. We learned that she had died in a hospital, but
there was no trace of the father.

"There was no one to dispute my title, so I at once made it legal.
Shortly afterward, she had a long, terrible fever, and oh, Margaret, the
things that poor child said in her delirium! Doctor Brinkerhoff was here
night and day, and his skill saved her, but when she came out of it she
was a pitiful little ghost. Mercifully, she had forgotten a great deal,
but even now some of the horror comes back to her occasionally. She
knows everything, except that her mother was a play-actress. I would not
want her to know that.

"For a while," Aunt Peace went on, "we both had a very hard time. She
was actually depraved. But I believed in the good that was hidden in her
somewhere--there is good in all of us if we can only find it,--and
little by little s