The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-07-24
(continued.)

i> (Continued)
 Caleb left in the limp fingers df the head of the Jenkins household vel low tinted note of a denomination which they had not even known exist ed. He left them half doubting its genuineness untfl later when there came an opportunity to spend it. And Sarah was waiting at the door of the white place on the hill when Caleb wheeled into the yard at dusk two days later.
 You've found himv' she exclaimed as she glimpsed his face when he en= tered the hall. q
 Caleb shook his head, his heart ach- ing at the hunger in her question. z "No, I haven't found him, Sarah" he said gently enough. But live found out who he is."
 They forgot their supper that night. With heads close together they hung for hours over the ink smeared sheaf of papers which the tin box yielded up. Most of them were covered with . cramped and misspelled handwriting which they knew must be that of the one whom Steve had called "Old Tom." Some of them were hard to decipher, but their import was very, very clear. X There was one picture, miniature of girl, eager of face and wavy of hair. Her relationship to the boy was unmistakable. Sarah found that and wept over it silently, and while she wept Caleb sifted out the remaining < loose sheets.
 'tIt's not hard to understand now, is it?" he said. Its pretty plain now why he had to go. And we, Sarah-we who were going to make something of him'-why, we should have known absolutely without this evidence. They laughed at him, they made fun of him, and there isn't any better blood than flows in that boys veinsl He was Stephen O'Mara's son, and mo more brilliant barrister than O'Mara ever addressed jury of prisoners peers and-and broke their very hearts with the simplicity of his pleading
 Sarah folded her thin hands over the woman's picture.
 q like his mothers face" she mur- mured faintly. "And I'm jealous of her, Cal! You don't have to remind me of the rest of it, either, for re- cali it all. She died and he-he went all to pieces. They said at his death that he was destitute. And when he did follow her-across- they hunted everywhere, didn't they, and never foupd the boy? Didn't some of the newspapers argue that a servant-a gardener-had stolen him?"
 Caleb nodded his head.
 Most of them ridiculed the sugges- tion, but it was true, just the same That servant was Olh Tom. And the only defense he makes Is just one line or so in-in this." Caleb dropped a hand upon the half legible pages. He says that he wasn't going to let civili- zation make of the boys life the wreck which he, poor, queer, honest soul, thought it had made of his fathers, And do you know, Sarah, do you know I can't help but believe. that this over jealous thing which the law would have prosecuted was the best thing he could have done? I'll take these things now and look them in the safe for the boy until he comes back home!' But Sarah Hunter kept the picture Of Stephen O'Mara's mother separate from the rest; she took it upstairs with her when she went, white and tired faced, to bed. And 1t was Sarah's faith which outlasted the years which followed. She never weakened in her belief that some day the boy would come back-she and one other whose Faith in his last boyish promise, phras- ed in bitterness. also endured. For during the next five years there was not a summer which brought Allison into the hills but what the first Ques- tion of his daughter Barbara, mother less now herself, was of Steve.
 "Has-has Stephen come backY' she asked invariably.
 At first the query was marked by nothing more than child's naive ea- gerness, and later, when it was brought up in a casual, by the way fashion, 1t was, nevertheless, tinged with hope. Five years heightened into ten, and still Steve did not come. But when. ever Barbara asked that question Ga kleb remembered, as though 1t had hap pened only yesterday, that morning when she first appeared to the boy. Then came morning when Stephen O'Mara did return. All winter and throughout the summer, too, the Hun ter place had been closed until that day in late October. It had been . warm week-a week of such unseason- able humidity for the hills that Caleb, rising somewhat before his usual hour, had banned his sleeplessness, as usual. upon the weather. He was glad to be home again that morning Caleb was wondering if Barbara would be with her father on this trip. Barbara had, he knew, been two years on the conti' nent, finishing" Allison called it, al. ways with wry race and gesture toward his wallet pocket. He was wondering as he came down the stairs if she would ask him again Sf-if-and then at the sight of a seated figure outside on the top step of the veranda he pulled up sharp in the doorway. Caleb didlrt have to wonder any longer.