CHAPTER XVII.
A WONDERFUL DISCOVERY "Joel, come to me quickly!" they heard her gasp, as though she were almost suffocating; and both of them hastened to her side.
"What has happened, wife ?" cried the alarmed deacon.
"Oh! tell me, am I awake, or dreaming, husband ?" she went on to say thickly.

"See what the child is wearing about his dear chubby neck! Surely we ought to know that tiny gold locket.

It carries me far back through the long, weary, waiting years to the day I clasped it about his neck--my baby Joel!" The deacon snatched the object from her quivering hand.

He stared hard at it, as though he, too, might suspect he were asleep, and that it was all but a vision of a disordered mind.
Hugh was trembling, he hardly knew why.

Something seemed to rush over him, something that thrilled him to the core.