Colonel Mapleson recognized them at once, while he was amazed by the fact of their being in the possession of his son. One of the letters he remembered losing after a visit to the cottage where his Annie had once lived, and he had been greatly disturbed over the fact; but the other, and the ring—which his dear wife had lost one night while sitting on the porch in their mountain home—he could not understand how he came by them. “You found that ring?” he asked, amazed. “Yes. I visited a certain cottage among the mountains of New Mexico last summer, and while standing upon one of the steps leading up to the door it gave way, and underneath I found this ring.” “Ah! we never thought of looking _under_ the step,” said the colonel, musingly. “It was a little loose for her finger just then, and, slipping off, rolled away out of sight, and we thought it very strange that we could not find it. Yes,” he continued, taking it up and regarding it tenderly, “Annie Dale never had her engagement-ring until the day of her marriage, when this was put on her finger as a _guard to her wedding-ring_! Annie Dale was my loved and honored wife, Everet, and Geoffrey, my son and hers,” indicating the young man by a motion of his hand, “will show you the certificate of our marriage, and the ring with which she was wed!” “_Your wife!_ Annie Dale _your wife_!” Everet repeated, starting back, amazed, all his color fading again at those words, and shocked into more respectful speech by the unexpected acknowledgment. CHAPTER XLVIII. PEACE AT LAST. “Yes, Annie Dale was my wife!” Everet bent a sullen look upon Geoffrey. “Then _he_ is _not_ a——” An imperative gesture from his father silenced the obnoxious word that trembled on his lips. “Geoffrey Huntress, as he has hitherto been known,” he said, “_is my son_, honorably entitled to my name, and an equal share with yourself of all I possess—a son whom I long mourned as dead, but whom I have most gladly welcomed to my heart and home this night, upon learning who he was.” “Would you have done so had you not been forced to it?” Everet rudely demanded. “Everet, you are very disrespectful to-night,” returned his father, with a frown, “I cannot understand why you should manifest such a spirit of hostility. But we will not talk more of this now; you shall have the details of the story of my early life later. I trust, however, that your sense of what is right and just will prompt you to some acknowledgment for your discourtesy toward your brother.” “_My brother!_” retorted Everet, aroused afresh at the word; “he has been nothing but a stumbling-block in my path ever since I first saw him; he humiliated me before friends in a way that I have never forgiven; he thwarted me in my hopes at college and in many plans—all but the last one,” he concluded, with a taunting laugh, turning defiantly toward Geoffrey, who was regarding him with more of sorrow than of anger.