"But," interrupted Donald, "I should think that the name Philip Bentley might have stirred a responsive chord in your memory before this--no, I don't suppose that it would have, after all, for you were so small that you didn't remember your own last name." "Yes, and not only that, but Philip was always called 'Young'--when he was a boy, anyway. Well, it seems that, when he was ten, and I was three, he was sent all alone to visit an uncle, a brother of his own father, who lived in Richmond. It was while he was away for the summer that my dear father was sent into the Cumberland Mountains between Kentucky and Virginia, prospecting for coal on behalf of the company in the employ of which he was. He took mother and me with him for a camping vacation, and ... and you know as much as I about the tragedy which separated us, and made such changes in our lives." Rose paused again, a prey to memory. "And then?" prompted Donald, gently. "Then, Philip said, when no word came from his parents for several weeks, his uncle left no stone unturned to find them, and at length the Federal Revenue authorities located the bodies of my dear mother and father, and part of their wrecked canoe, in the swift river, almost at the foot of the mountains. Of course every one assumed that I had ... had been drowned, too." "Oh, thank God that you were not, my dear," breathed Donald, so softly that she could not hear him. "Then Philip went to live permanently with his uncle, who raised and educated him as one of his own sons. Of course he took his real name again. Oh, Donald, isn't it too wonderful?" "Yes, dear heart, wonderful, indeed." There was a long silence. Then Donald asked, softly, "And Philip? How does he feel?" "He ... he is happy, too," came her reply, somewhat haltingly. "Of course, just at first ... oh, please don't ask me, Don. But now he is content, for he knows that I ... I couldn't ever have been anything else to him, because I loved ano.... I loved _you_." "He knows that? Rose, you didn't tell him?" "Yes, I did," she answered, bravely. "And let me tell _you_, sir, that it is lucky for you that ... that you asked me; for, if you hadn't, you would have had my big brother to deal with!" And what the cricket heard _then_, has nothing to do with this story. CHAPTER XXXV THE HALLOWED MOON They were to be married early in September--just a month from the day when Smiles so nearly gave her life to save another's. During the days which must pass before she became Donald's in the full trinity of body, mind and soul, his family kept her at Manchester-by-the-Sea and each hour bound her more closely to the heart of each.