gh, followed by prattling tones. The child was
talking in her sleep. Her dreams must have been pleasant, for her
lilting voice rang out again.

"It is beautiful on you, Betty! Maybe brother John will get me one, too.
Then we can wear them to the church sociable, eh, Betty?"

"Brother John!" he echoed, softly. It was sweet and vaguely comforting
to know that the little waif relied upon him even in her dreams. He
crept into her room on his tiptoes, bent over Dora, and looked at her.
What an angelic, spritelike creature she seemed in her white gown and
golden hair! How delicate and refined her features and tapering hands!
In the half-light he saw that she was smiling. Smiling! She had never
smiled like that in the old house at Ridgeville. She had begun to smile
and laugh and jest under his love and care, and he told himself that it
should always be so.

He went back to his bed, turned his damp pillow over, and laid his head
on a dry spot. As he lay trying to sleep, the visions of his dream began
to hover over him, and, wincing and writhing with pain, he cried:

"Be a man, John Trott! It is your yellow streak again. Kill it now, or
it will down you in the end!"

PART II

CHAPTER I

Ten eventful years of toil and struggle for John Trott went by. True to
the prophecy of Cavanaugh and other practical men, he succeeded. Step by
step he rose till, on the death of Mr. Pilcher, he became an equal
partner with Reed in the business. He and Dora still lived with the
McGwires in the old house, which was now kept for roomers only. John
could have well afforded to give Dora a more expensive home, but both he
and she had become inseparably attached to these first friends of theirs
in New York.

Dora, a tall, slender girl of nineteen, while not exactly pretty, was
quite attractive. John had sent her to a select school for young ladies,
and the polish and education she had received had not spoiled her. She
was not ashamed of the fact that she and John had once been what they
were. In fact, the McGwires knew all the circumstances connected with
their clandestine flight from the South, and guarded well their secret.

Not once, even indirectly, had either John or Dora heard from their
former home. Dora had almost entirely forgotten it, and, while John
could not possibly do so, it had become like a dream of blended joy and
pain which he persistently put aside. But at times a grim certitude
fixed itself on him, that, ha