keenly, then seemed to gain confidence,
and asked him to sit down. The visitor obeyed; but Cynthia continued
standing, with her hands on the back of a heavy chair.

"Mr. Reuben Dare?" she said at length, as the old man did not speak.

"Come straight from Ameriky," said he--he sat bolt-upright on his chair,
and looked at the girl with a steady interest and curiosity which almost
embarrassed her--"and promised to look you up as soon as I got over
here. Can you guess who 'twas I promised, missy?"

Cynthia grew first red and then white.

"No," she said; "I am not sure that I can."

"Is there nobody belonging to you that you haven't heard of for years
and years?"

"Yes," said Cynthia; "I think perhaps there is."

"A man," said Mr. Reuben Dare, leaning forward with his hands on his
knees, and trying to subdue his rather harsh voice to quietness--"a man
as was related to you, maybe?"

"If you will say what you mean, I think I can answer you better," said
Cynthia.

"Do you think I am going to say what I mean until I know what sort of a
young woman you are, and how you'll take the news I bring you?" said the
man.

With a somewhat savage and truculent air he drew his eyebrows down over
his eyes as he spoke; but there was a touch of something else as
well--of stirred emotion, of doubt, of troubled feeling--which
dissipated Cynthia's fears at once. She left the chair which she had
been grasping with one hand, and came closer to her visitor.

"I see that you are afraid to trust me," she said quickly. "You think
that perhaps I am hard and worldly, and do not want to have anything to
do with my relatives? That is not true. You are thinking--speaking--of
my poor father perhaps. As long as I was a child--a mere girl--I did not
think much about him, I was content to believe what people told me--not
that he was guilty--I never believed that!--but that I could do nothing
for him, and that I had better not interfere. When I was independent and
beginning to think for myself--about six months ago--I found out what I
might have done. Shall I go on to tell you what I did?"

"Yes, yes--go on!" The man's voice was husky; his wrinkled hand trembled
as it lay upon his knee. He watched the girl's face with hungry eyes.

"I wrote to the Governor of the prison," said Cynthia, "and told him
that I had only just discovered--having been such a child--that I could
write to my father or see him at regular intervals, and that I should
like t