his father; they would introduce into his problem some new, some
unknown person--the sender of these things.

She went in and put the box down upon the card table.

"The muffler in the box was your father's," she told him. "He had it
on the day he disappeared. The other things," her voice choked a
little, "are the things he must have had in his pockets. They've been
lying in water and sand--"

He gazed at her. "I understand," he said after an instant. "You mean
that they prove his death."

She assented gently, without speaking. As he approached the box, she
drew back from it and slipped away into the next room. She walked up
and down there, pressing her hands together. He must be looking at the
things now, unrolling the muffler.... What would he be feeling as he
saw them? Would he be glad, with that same gladness which had mingled
with her own sorrow over Uncle Benny, that his father was gone--gone
from his guilt and his fear and his disgrace? Or would he resent that
death which thus left everything unexplained to him? He would be
looking at the ring. That, at least, must bring more joy than grief to
him. He would recognize that it must be his mother's wedding ring; if
it told him that his mother must be dead, it would tell him that she
had been married, or had believed that she was married!

Suddenly she heard him calling her. "Miss Sherrill!" His voice had a
sharp thrill of excitement.

She hurried toward the sun room. She could see him through the
doorway, bending over the card table with the things spread out upon
its top in front of him.

"Miss Sherrill!" he called again.

"Yes."

He straightened; he was very pale. "Would coins that my father had in
his pocket all have been more than twenty years old?"

She ran and bent beside him over the coins. "Twenty years!" she
repeated. She was making out the dates of the coins now herself; the
markings were eroded, nearly gone in some instances, but in every case
enough remained to make plain the date. "Eighteen-ninety--1893--1889,"
she made them out. Her voice hushed queerly. "What does it mean?" she
whispered.

He turned over and reexamined the articles with hands suddenly
steadying. "There are two sets of things here," he concluded. "The
muffler and paper of directions--they belonged to my father. The other
things--it isn't six months or less than six months that they've lain
in sand and water to become worn like this; it's twenty