"Of course not." "I don't want to alarm you, my dear, but you ought to be very careful." "I shall be." Al laughed. "I don't think there is much danger," he said. "That letter sounds like an extract from a sensational novel. A barking dog never bites, you know." "I don't know anything of the sort," returned Mr. Wattles. "Some barking dogs do bite; and this one, as you have reason to know yourself, has sharp teeth. Well, just let me lay my hands on him and I'll settle him in short order." "What will you do?" smiled Al. "First, as I said before, I'll give him a sound thrashing. Oh, you may laugh, but I can do it, if I am not a boy. And then I'll hand him over to the authorities. By Jove! I had no idea that the fellow was such a scoundrel when he was in my employ, or I wouldn't have kept him an hour. But now I really must be off. Do your best to-night, Miss March; you'll have one of the biggest houses of the season--thanks to the exertions of that sharp young brother of yours." And the manager rushed out of the room. "Brother!" the girl said, softly. "How sweet the name sounds. To think that I have a brother! And a mother!" "Don't cry--please don't!" entreated Al, with a boy's horror of feminine tears. "They are tears of joy, brother. And now you must go and send the telegram." CHAPTER XXII. AN AWFUL CATASTROPHE. A telegram, carefully worded so that Mrs. Allston's maternal alarms might not be aroused, was sent. In it Al requested her to come to Rockton by a certain train, and promised to be at the depot to meet her. A reply came within an hour: "Yours received. Shall be there. Hope nothing has happened." "I should say something had happened," laughed Al, when he and his new-found sister had read the message. "Poor mother!" sighed the girl. "She fears that you have met with some accident." "In a very few hours that fear will be dispelled. What will she say when she learns the truth?" "Ah, what?" responded Miss March. "I dread almost as much as I long for the meeting." The anxious mother arrived on time. It is not our purpose to chronicle the first meeting between the long-separated couple. Such scenes defy the skill of the storyteller's pen or the artist's brush. Suffice it to say that the proofs of her identity presented by the young girl were perfectly satisfactory to Mrs. Allston, and that the reunion of mother and daughter was all that the fancy of either had ever pictured it. True, the somewhat Puritanical old lady was a little shocked at finding her daughter a member of the theatrical profession; she had always regarded player folk as far beneath herself, both socially and morally, and her own daughter was probably the first actress she had ever seen off the stage. "I wish, my dear," she said, "that you would give up this dreadful business and go home with me. To think of my child, my daughter, a play actress! It is dreadful!"