p to the pictured face. Her head nodded slowly.

"It must be," she muttered, "it must be. No one else could have done it.
But four hundred years!"--she sighed softly. "Who can tell?"

Her glance wandered with a dissatisfied air to the other canvases. "I
would give them all--all of them--twice over--to know--" She spoke under
her breath as she hobbled stiffly to a huge chair.

The door swung softly back and forth behind a young girl who had
entered. She came in lightly, looking down at a packet of papers in her
hand.

The old woman started forward.

"What have ye found?" she demanded. She was leaning on the stout cane.
She peered out of her cavernous eyes.

The girl crossed to the window and seated herself in the green light.
Shadows of a climbing vine fell on her hair and shoulders as she bent
over the papers in her hand. She opened one of them and ran her eye over
it before she spoke.

"They were in the north room," she said slowly. "In the big
_escritoire_--that big, clumsy one--I've looked there before, but I
never found them. I've been trying all day to make them out."

"What are they?" demanded the old woman.

"Papers, grandmamma," returned the girl absently; "letters and a sort of
journal." Her eyes were on the closely written page.

"Read it," said the old woman sharply.

"I can't read it, grandmamma." She shook back the soft curls with a
little sigh. "It's queer and old, and funny--some of the words. And the
writing is blurred and yellow. Look." She held up the open sheet.

The keen old eyes darted at it. "Work on it," she said brusquely.

"I have, grandmamma."

"Well--what did ye find?"

"It's a man--Will--Willi"--she turned to the bottom of the last
page--"Willibald! That's it." She laughed softly. "Willibald Pirkheimer.
Who was he?" she asked.

"One of your ancestors." The old mouth waited grimly.

"One of mamma's?"

"Your father's."

"He must have been a nice man," said the girl slowly. "But some of it is
rather--queer."

The old woman leaned forward with a quick gesture. She straightened
herself. "Nonsense!" she muttered. "Read it," she said aloud.

"This is written to Albrecht Duerer," said the girl, studying it, "in
Italy."

The old woman reached out a knotted hand. "Give it to me," she said.

The girl came across and laid it in her hand. The knotted fingers
smoothed it. The old eyes were on the picture above the mantel. "Will it
tell?" she muttered.

"There are others, gra