“I’m going to tell everything now, Ralph, because I’m sorry I ever had a hand in this game. I can see now what that scoundrel was after, and how he used me as a tool. Even if I go to jail for it, I’m going to tell the truth!” He brought his fist down upon his knee as he spoke in this manner. “Three years afterward I just chanced to be up in these parts again for a little stay. To tell you the ugly truth, I was hiding from the police at that time. While here I remembered about that kid, and asked a few cautious questions. In that way I learned that the Wests had adopted you, and that they called you Ralph. And when I heard that they were a good family, and would treat you white, why, I just kinder let the thing slip out of my mind, believing that you’d be happy without ever knowing that they wasn’t your real parents. “I admit that more’n once I tried to find that gent. Them times was when I was hard up and thought I might threaten him into giving me some more coin. But he seemed to have covered his tracks too well for me. I reckon I hunted New York all over thinking to see him, but it was no go. Now I suppose it was because he kept on the other side of the ocean most of the time.” “Then you remember what he looked like, do you?” asked Ralph, eagerly. At this Sam Smalling chuckled. “It’s better than that, my boy, far better. I’ve got a picture of my benevolent employer, took in the queerest way you ever heard of.” He drew out an old pocketbook, and rummaging through this found a small piece of cardboard which he handed to the boy. Ralph uttered an exclamation of astonishment. The photograph was weak, having either faded from age, or else because of insufficient light at the time of taking; but it was easy to distinguish in one of the two figures a man who much resembled Sam Smalling. “Why, isn’t this you?” demanded Ralph. “No other. And that chap standing there is Mr. Andrew Jackson, as he called himself, which I believe is the same as Mr. Arnold Musgrove,” replied the man. “But what is he handing you--that bundle?” gasped the boy, suspecting the truth. “That was _you_, Ralph, the poor little baby that he wanted to have disappear! Yes, this picture was taken at just the minute he gave you to me. You wonder how that could ever happen, and I’ll tell you. I was bunking at the time with a drunken photographer, and he knew what I was going to do. It was his suggestion that he try and get a picture of the man of money. I remember we had a hazy notion that it might help us to get money out of the chap later on.” “And he managed it, then?” asked Ralph, wondering; for flashlights were hardly in use so far back, and this picture showed no signs of having been taken in that fashion.