Joe opened the same, and then after he hastily scanned its contents he speechlessly stared at his hostess.

"Great God in Heaven," exclaimed Joe, breaking the suspense and unable to better express his amazement at the singular turn affairs had taken, while with a trembling hand he drew forth from the paper a small leather purse.

"Can it be possible that you, Mrs.McDonald, are 'Babe', the girl I met fifteen years ago in Chicago, and whose timely assistance gave me a start upon the narrow path ?" "I am the same girl, Joe," she quietly replied, "and it was for the express purpose of getting a chance to tell you that I am 'Babe' that I stared so rudely into your face, because I knew that now or never had come the climax in the lives of those who had in former days known each other as 'Babe' and 'Dakota Joe'." Then she took the small leather purse out of Joe's trembling hand and again wrapped it in the paper, and after striking a match that she had brought for this purpose, she held the lighted splinter against the paper, and when the hungry flames leaped up she threw the burning parcel upon the lawn below, and while they both watched the fire consume the fateful purse, Mrs.McDonald took Joe's hand into her own and while they pressed a mute, but none the less oath-bound promise to each other, she solemnly said: "For the sake of Jim's happy home and our innocent children, for the sake of the name all of us bear, and the many years I have lived an honorable life to atone for what occurred before the day when I last saw you in Chicago, I plead with you, whom, to my horror, I later discovered to be my own husband's missing brother, to let the past be forgiven, to be buried in silence and be forever hereafter forgotten." [Illustration: decorative element].