I happened on the thing by the merest accident. My father had been going through the papers in his desk the night before, tying up old letters in bundles, and burning many in the grate. He had been quite absorbed in this dusty task when Owen and I had come in from our walk, and he had been still absorbed in it when we had left him and gone up to bed. This afternoon we were to call for the Dales, and Owen was waiting for me now in the garden, sitting on the wall, nibbling nasturtium leaves, whistling, and swinging his legs to and fro, while I, having broken my shoe-lace, was in the parlour replacing it. And as I bent down, through the tail of my eye I caught a glimpse of something white between the desk and the wall. I laced up my shoe, and then, pushing the desk further to one side, with the help of the poker I fished out an envelope. There was no writing on this envelope, and the flap was loose, but inside I felt something stiff and flat, like a card or a photograph. I pulled it out. It was a photograph, considerably faded, and certainly most astonishing if it had fallen from my father’s desk, as I supposed it must have. For it represented a person very much like the ladies in the chorus at the Christmas pantomime I had gone to see with George――better looking, possibly, than most of them, but similarly clad, in doublet and tights, and with a velvet cap, with a cock’s feather stuck in it, set rakishly at the side of a curly head. The face wore the conventional simper such faces seem naturally to assume in the presence of photographers, displaying an admirable set of teeth. A sword dangled from the waist, a short cloak hung from the shoulders, and the right hand was raised to the cap in a dashing and coquettish salute. There was something so comical in the idea of my father, of all persons in the world, having treasured up this souvenir of what I took to be a youthful flight of fancy, that I laughed aloud, and was on the point of calling in Owen to show it to him, when I turned the photograph round and on the back read, in a sprawling feminine hand, “From Milly.” I stopped short. Owen was still kicking his heels against the whitewashed wall, still whistling, but I did not disturb him. I heard my father coming downstairs, and my first impulse was to cram both envelope and photograph into my pocket. I heard him in the hall, I heard him turn the handle of the parlour door, and then I went to meet him. “I found this,” I said, “on the floor.” And I held it out to him. My father glanced at it indifferently, but when he saw what it was a faint flush crept into his face. It was the first time I had ever seen him change colour. He took it from me without a word, and, putting it back in its envelope, unlocked the desk. He opened a drawer somewhere, and I saw him, still without speaking, slip in the envelope. Then he pulled down the lid of the desk, which shut with a sharp click, and turned to me. “Do you know who it was?” he asked, abruptly.