He had been a captain in the United States Navy, and one of the youngest officers in the service. The Mortons were an old Virginia family, and after Robert Morton's graduation from Annapolis he was rapidly promoted in the service. He had married Mrs. Butler's only sister, Eleanor, for whom Nellie was named. Two months after Madge's birth, while her husband was away on a cruise, Madge's mother died at her sister's home, and, as her father never came back to claim her, she had been brought up by her uncle and aunt. This was all she had been told of the story of her mother and father. It made her aunt unhappy to talk of them, so Madge had asked few questions as she grew to young womanhood. But to-day she felt that she would like to know whether her father had died and been buried at sea--she always thought of him as dead--or whether a tablet had ever been erected to his memory at Annapolis. She had never been to Annapolis, although it was not a great distance from Miss Tolliver's school, but she knew that the Government often honored its brave officers and sailors with these memorials. She was thinking of these things as she left the dining room and climbed the steep, ladder-like stairs that led to the attic. The attic of "Forest House" was worth a longer journey than Madge had to make. It was built of solid cedar wood, with beams a foot thick over head, and put together with great cedar pegs. The attic was a long, low-ceilinged room, dark and fragrant with the odor of the cedar. It was lit by four big, old-fashioned dormer windows in the front and four in the rear. Her mother's trunk was kept in one corner of the attic behind an old oak chest. Mrs. Butler did not wish to be haunted by sad memories when she made her frequent trips to her attic to look after the family clothing and bedding, so she had partly hidden her sister's trunk. Madge opened the trunk in the half light. On top of everything was a pile of her first baby dresses. Farther down she came upon a sandalwood box containing her mother's jewelry. The box contained a beautiful and unusual collection of rare stones. Captain Morton had brought many of the jewels back from the Orient as presents to his wife.