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“Well, your papers?”

“My papers?”

“Yes. Proof of your identity. You say your name is Cass Beard. Good! What have you got to prove it? How can I tell who you are?”

To a sensitive man there is no form of suspicion that is as bewildering and demoralizing at the moment as the question of his identity. Cass felt the insult in the doubt of his word, and the palpable sense of his present inability to prove it. The banker watched him keenly but not unkindly.

“Come,” he said at length, “this is not my affair; if you can legally satisfy the lady for whom I am only agent, well and good. I believe you can; I only warn you that you must. And my present inquiry was to keep her from losing her time with impostors, a class I don’t think you belong to. There’s her card. Good day.”

“Miss Mortimer.” It was NOT the banker’s daughter. The first illusion of Blazing Star was rudely dispelled. But the care taken by the capitalist to shield her from imposture indicated a person of wealth. Of her youth and beauty Cass no longer thought.

The address given was not distant. With a beating heart he rung the bell of a respectable-looking house, and was ushered into a private drawing-room. Instinctively he felt that the room was only temporarily inhabited; an air peculiar to the best lodgings, and when the door opened upon a tall lady in deep mourning, he was still more convinced of an incongruity between the occupant and her surroundings. With a smile that vacillated between a habit of familiarity and ease, and a recent restraint, she motioned him to a chair.

“Miss Mortimer” was still young, still handsome, still fashionably dressed, and still attractive. From her first greeting to the end of the interview Cass felt that she knew all about him. This relieved him from the onus of proving his identity, but seemed to put him vaguely at a disadvantage. It increased his sense of inexperience and youthfulness.

“I hope you will believe,” she began, “that the few questions I have to ask you are to satisfy my own heart, and for no other purpose.” She smiled sadly as she went on. “Had it been otherwise, I should have instituted a legal inquiry, and left this interview to some one cooler, calmer, and less interested than myself. But I think, I KNOW I can trust you. Perhaps we women are weak and foolish to talk of an INSTINCT, and when you know my story you may have reason to believe that but little dependence can be placed on THAT; but I am not wrong in saying,–am I?” (with a sad smile) “that YOU are not above that weakness?” She paused, closed her lips tightly, and grasped her hands before her. “You say you found that ring in the road some three months before–the–the–you know what I mean–the body–was discovered?”

“Yes.”

“You thought it might have been dropped by some one in passing?”

“I thought so, yes–it belonged to no one in camp.”

“Before your cabin or on the highway?”

“Before my cabin.”

“You are SURE?” There was something so very sweet and sad in her smile that it oddly made Cass color.

“But my cabin is near the road,” he suggested.

“I see! And there was nothing else; no paper nor envelope?”

“Nothing.”

“And you kept it because of the odd resemblance one of the names bore to yours?”

“Yes.”

“For no other reason

“None.” Yet Cass felt he was blushing.

“You’ll forgive my repeating a question you have already answered, but I am so anxious. There was some attempt to prove at the inquest that the ring had been found on the body of–the unfortunate man. But you tell me it was not so?”

“I can swear it.”

“Good God–the traitor!” She took a hurried step forward, turned to the window, and then came back to Cass with a voice broken with emotion. “I have told you I could trust you. That ring was mine!”