"At about the height of my ill-luck, I got a letter from Mabel Verne--she had another name, but that don't matter--and she asked me again to come to her; to have a home, and care and devotion. It wasn't a love-sick letter, but it was one of them strong, tender, _fetching_ letters. It was unselfish, it asked very little of me, and offered a good deal. "I thought over it all night, and decided at last to go. What better was I than this woman? Surely she was better educated, better bred. She had made one mistake, I had made many. She had no friends on earth; I didn't seem to have any, either. I hadn't had a letter from either of my married sisters for six or eight years, then. We could trust one another, and have an object in life in the education of the child. I'd be no worse off than I was, anyway. "The next morning I felt better. I got ready to leave, bid all my fellow flat-wheels good-by; and had a gig ordered to take me to the train--the doctor had given me two-hundred dollars a short time before--'from a lady friend.' "As I sat waiting for the hack, they brought me a letter from home--a big one, with a picture in it. It was from my youngest sister, and the picture was of her ten-year boy, named for me--such a happy, sunny little Swede face you never see. 'He always talks of Uncle Oscar as a great and good man,' wrote Carrie, 'and says every day that he's going to do just like you. He will do nothing that we tell him Uncle Oscar would not like, and anything that he would. If you are as good as he thinks you are, you are sure of heaven.' "And I was even then going off to live with a woman who made a fortune out of Virginia City dance-houses. I had a sort of a remorseful chill, and before I really knew just where I was, I had got to Arizona, and from there to the Santa Fé where you knew me. "I wrote my benefactress an honest letter, and told her why I had not come, and in a short time sent her the money she had put up for me; but it was returned again, and I sent it to the mission for my little girl. "Well, while I was with you there, I got a fare-thee-well letter, saying that when I got that Mabel Verne would be no more--same as dead--and that she had deposited forty thousand dollars in the Phoenix Bank for _your_ little girl--_yours_, mind ye--and asked me to adopt her legally and tell her that her mother was dead. "John, I ain't heard of that woman from then until now. I thought she had got tired of waiting on me and got married, but I believe she is dead. "I went to California and adopted the baby--a daisy too--and I've honestly tried to be a father to her. "I got to making money in outside speculations, and had plenty; so I let her money accumulate at the Phoenix and paid her way myself. "About four years ago, I left the road for good; bought me a nice place just outside of Oakland, and settled down to take a little comfort.