"Pardon me, have you ever seen or heard of the countess since?" "Never." "Nor her brother?" "Nor her brother." "And the locket?" "It is here where she placed it." At this instant the moon rolled out from behind a cloud, and shone full on his face. He drew out his watch-chain, touched it with his thumb-nail, and placed the trinket in my hand. It was such as a child might wear, an enameled thread encircling it. Through the glass I could see the tiny nest of jet-black hair. For some moments neither of us spoke. At last, with my heart aglow, my whole nature profoundly stirred by the unconscious nobility of the man, I said:-- "My friend, do you know why she bound the bracelet to your wrist?" "No; that always puzzled me. I have often wondered." "She bound the bracelet to your wrist, as of old a maid would have wound her scarf about the shield of her victorious knight, as the queen would pin the iron cross to the breast of a hero. You were the first gentleman she had ever known in her life." JOHN SANDERS, LABORER [The outlines of this story were given me by my friend Augustus Thomas, whose plays are but an index to the tenderness of his own nature.] He came from up the railroad near the State line. Sanders was the name on the pay-roll,--John Sanders, laborer. There was nothing remarkable about him. He was like a hundred others up and down the track. If you paid him off on Saturday night you would have forgotten him the next week, unless, perhaps, he had spoken to you. He looked fifty years of age, and yet he might have been but thirty. He was stout and strong, his hair and beard cropped short. He wore a rough blue jumper, corduroy trousers, and a red flannel shirt, which showed at his throat and wrists. He wore, too, a leather strap buckled about his waist. If there was anything that distinguished him it was his mouth and eyes, especially when he smiled. The mouth was clean and fresh, the teeth snow-white and regular, as if only pure things came through them; the eyes were frank and true, and looked straight at you without wavering. If you gave him an order he said, "Yes, sir," never taking his gaze from yours until every detail was complete. When he asked a question it was to the point and short. The first week he shoveled coal on a siding, loading the yard engines. Then Burchard, the station-master, sent him down to the street crossing to flag the trains for the dump carts filling the scows at the long dock. This crossing right-angled a deep railroad cut half a mile long. On the level above, looking down upon its sloping sides, staggered a row of half-drunken shanties with blear-eyed windows, and ragged roofs patched and broken; some hung over on crutches caught under their floor timbers. Sanders lived in one of these cabins,--the one nearest the edge of the granite retaining-wall flanking the street crossing.