Jim
Dilks. I engaged him to accompany me, and securing a lantern we hurried
along. And Darry, we found you just in time, for the sea was carrying
you out. I believe that wretch must have cast you into the water just as
he did the body of the passenger."

"Then I owe my life to you--Cousin Paul?"

"If so it only squares accounts, for I guess I'd have gone under out
there on the sound only for your coming in time. But Darry, do you think
you feel strong enough to see your mother? I forced her to lie down in
the little room beyond, but she cannot sleep from the excitement."

"Yes, oh! yes. Please bring her. I shall be a long time understanding it
all, and trying to realize that I am truly awake. To think that I
really have a mother!"

Darry drew a long breath, and followed Paul with eager eyes as he went
through the doorway into the other room.

It was dawn now.

In more senses than one the day had come to Darry.

He heard low voices, and then someone came through the door, someone
whose eyes were fastened hungrily upon his face.

Darry struggled to sit up, and was just in time to feel a pair of arms
around his neck and have his poor aching head drawn lovingly upon the
bosom of the mother whom he had not known since infancy.

CHAPTER XXV

CONCLUSION

Later on, in fragments, Darry learned the whole story. It was all very
wonderful, and yet simple enough.

The old man whom he remembered so well, and who had told him to call him
uncle, was in reality a brother of his mother.

He had quarreled with his sister Elizabeth's husband, after abusing his
kindness, and to cancel what he called a debt, had actually stolen the
only child of the man he had wronged and hated.

An old story, yet happening just as frequently in these modern days as
in times of old, for men have the same passions, and there is nothing
new under the sun.

Everything that money could do was done to find the man and the little
boy he had kidnapped, but he proved too cunning for them all, and
although several times traces were found of his being at some foreign
city, when a hunt was made he had again vanished.

So the years came and went, and the child's mother was left a widow.

Hope never deserted her heart, though it must have grown fainter as time
passed on, and all traces of the wicked child-stealer seemed swallowed
up in mystery.

Paul had known of her great trouble, and it was the remarkable
resemblance of Darry to a pictur