Mattia. Let me have news of you sometimes, dear boy, you are so
tender and affectionate, and I hope, now you have found your
family, they will all love you as you deserve to be loved. I kiss
you lovingly.
"Your foster mother,
"WIDOW BARBERIN."

Dear Mother Barberin! she imagined that everybody must love me because
she did!

"She's a fine woman," said Mattia; "very fine, she thought of me! Now
let's see what Mr. Driscoll has to say."

"He might have forgotten the things."

"Does one forget the clothes that their child wears when it was
kidnaped? Why, it's only through its clothes that they can find it."

"Wait until we hear what he says before we think anything."

It was not an easy thing for me to ask my father how I was dressed on
the day that I was stolen. If I had put the question casually without
any underthought, it would have been simple enough. As it was I was
timid. Then one day when the cold sleet had driven me home earlier than
usual, I took my courage in both hands, and broached the subject that
was causing me so much anxiety. At my question my father looked me full
in the face. But I looked back at him far more boldly than I imagined
that I could at this moment. Then he smiled. There was something hard
and cruel in the smile but still it was a smile.

"On the day that you were stolen from us," he said slowly, "you wore a
flannel robe, a linen robe, a lace bonnet, white woolen shoes, and a
white embroidered cashmere pelisse. Two of your garments Were marked
F.D., Francis Driscoll, your real name, but this mark was cut out by the
woman who stole you, for she hoped that in this way you would never be
found. I'll show you your baptismal certificates which, of course, I
still have."

He searched in a drawer and soon brought forth a big paper which he
handed to me.

"If you don't mind," I said with a last effort, "Mattia will translate
it for me."

"Certainly."

Mattia translated it as well as he could. It appeared that I was born on
Thursday, August the 2nd, and that I was the son of John Driscoll and
Margaret Grange, his wife.

What further proofs could I ask?

"That's all very fine," said Mattia that night, when we were in our
caravan, "but how comes it that peddlers were rich enough to give their
children lace bonnets and embroidered pelisses? Peddlers are not so rich
as that!"

"It is becaus