'
"As I sat waiting for the hack, they brought me a letter from home--a
big one, with a picture in it. It was from my youngest sister, and the
picture was of her ten-year boy, named for me--such a happy, sunny
little Swede face you never see. 'He always talks of Uncle Oscar as a
great and good man,' wrote Carrie, 'and says every day that he's going
to do just like you. He will do nothing that we tell him Uncle Oscar
would not like, and anything that he would. If you are as good as he
thinks you are, you are sure of heaven.'
"And I was even then going off to live with a woman who made a fortune
out of Virginia City dance-houses. I had a sort of a remorseful chill,
and before I really knew just where I was, I had got to Arizona, and
from there to the Santa Fe where you knew me.
"I wrote my benefactress an honest letter, and told her why I had not
come, and in a short time sent her the money she had put up for me; but
it was returned again, and I sent it to the mission for my little girl.
"Well, while I was with you there, I got a fare-thee-well letter, saying
that when I got that Mabel Verne would be no more--same as dead--and
that she had deposited forty thousand dollars in the Phoenix Bank for
_your_ little girl--_yours_, mind ye--and asked me to adopt her legally
and tell her that her mother was dead.
Pages:
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154