to start on his own account in the shipping
and transportation business, seeing at once that here was a certain road
to success. And so it had proved, for to-day his was the best-known and
most highly-respected name in all that broad region. But there had been
times such as that to which Mr. Hilary Forester had alluded in his
letter--when money, success, popularity, all seemed as nothing compared
with a wife, a home, a child to love him. He envied the poorest labourer
with these blessings. He now felt like a man in a dream. Fifteen years!
He saw in fancy the little child he would have loved to take upon his
knee; the growing girl learning her first lessons. How he would have
cared for her and watched over her, trying to be both father and mother
to the motherless child! Now she was growing quickly to womanhood, and
he knew nothing of her, nor she of him. A great wave of indignation
against his brother-in-law swept over him; it was a downright crime to
have kept him in ignorance all these years, and the man should be
brought to book. All the old bitterness against his wife's unreasonable
brother took hold of him, and Captain Shaw's suggestion as to the
forgetting of bygones seemed for a time little likely to be acted upon.
But this mood passed, and then a great tenderness towards this unknown
daughter of his welled up in his heart, and he made up his mind. He
would go as soon as he could, and find out the truth.

Other influences were at work to bring about this meeting of father and
child. Dr. Hunter, yielding at last to the voice of conscience, had
written to Hugh Davidson, but he had sent the letter to the care of the
company to which he had belonged in the old days. This company had since
gone out of existence, and the letter had come back, as Mary Ann had
told Marjory, and nothing more was done for a time.

Mrs. Forester, ever since the beginning of their acquaintance, had made
periodical attacks upon the doctor, declaring that it was his duty to
take steps to bring back Marjory's father. It must be remembered that
Mrs. Forester knew nothing of the part Dr. Hunter had played, and blamed
the cold-heartedness of a man who could leave his child unclaimed for
fifteen years.

While Marjory was ill, Mrs. Forester renewed the attack with many
arguments. At last one day, in a moment of expansion, the doctor
confessed what he had done. In the face of Mrs. Forester's amazed
displeasure, his reasons for his conduct seemed a