th the
sweetness of the thought that she had not only found her father, but had
discovered him in the person of the best man she had ever known. The
discovery of her father might have proved a bitter disappointment; it
was actually such as to fill her with unspeakable gratitude. She did not
greatly regret that she had not found her mother, as well as her father.
It would probably have caused her real grief, if any one had appeared to
claim the place in her heart which was held by the woman from whom she had
always received, in a peculiar degree, a mother's love and a mother's
care. One could find room for any number of fathers--provided they were
worthy. But a mother!--her place was sacred; there could be no sharing of
her throne.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

A JOYOUS DISCOVERY.

It was long that night before "Cobbler" Horn fell asleep. He was free from
pain, and felt better altogether than at any time since the beginning of
his illness. Yet he could not sleep. The story of his young secretary, as
she had told it this evening, had supplied him with thoughts calculated to
banish slumber from the most drowsy eyes.

Miss Owen had told him her simple story many times before; but this
evening she had introduced certain new particulars of a startling kind;
and it was as the result of the thoughts thereby suggested that he was
unable to sleep. The few additional details which the young secretary had
included in her narrative this evening had given a new aspect to the
story. There was the solitary shoe she had worn at the time when she had
come into the kind hands of Mr. and Mrs. Burton, and the fact that she
was a very indistinct talker at the time. The entire story, too, seemed
to correspond so well--why should he not admit it?--with what might not
improbably have been the history of his little Marian; and Marian would
be, at that time, about the same age as was Miss Owen when she was found
by the friends whose adopted child she became. But the solitary shoe! He
wondered whether it was still in her possession. He would ask her in the
morning. And then the indistinct talk of which she had spoken! How well
he remembered the pretty broken speech of his own little pet! Then there
returned to him that gleam of intelligence with regard to the meaning of
the strange words of Tommy Dudgeon with which he had been visited at the
beginning of his illness. Surely this was what his fait