Perhaps I sha'n't have any children of my own--ever--" she dreamed, "and if I don't--it will be nice to think that I did something--for this one--" For a moment the chill of caution went over her.
"Suppose it isn't really Paul," she thought.

"Suppose--it's some sharper.
Perhaps that's why dad never wrote him--" But an instinct, deeper than anything which the mind can express, told her that the letter rang true and had no false metal in it.
"Or suppose," she thought, "if he knows dad is dead--suppose he turns up and makes trouble for everybody--" Wally's story returned to her memory.

"There was an accident out West--somebody killed.

Anyhow he was blamed for it--so he could never come back or they'd get him--" "That agrees with his living under this Russian name," nodded Mary.
"Anyhow, I'm sure there's nothing to fear in doing a good action--for a child like this--" She propped the picture on her desk and after a great deal of dipping her pen in the ink, she finally began-- "Dear Sir: "I have opened your letter to my father, Josiah Spencer.

He has been dead three years.