"He is my husband--the man I loved before I met Smithers, whom I married, thinking my first love dead." A new light now burst upon Tommy. "He your husband, mamma?" he exclaimed. "Yes, my dear, and your father," she said. Now Tommy knew why the face had haunted him so. Capt. Jordan was no other than the man Thompson, who had taken him from Jersey City, and so nearly got him into trouble in New York. "Do you love him, mamma?" he asked. "I do," she replied. "Then I will give him my hand," said Tommy, "and if you are not ashamed to be called his wife, I am proud to be his son." Capt. Jordan, or Thompson, took the boy's hand and imprinted a kiss on his forehead. "You shall never have cause to regret calling me father," he exclaimed. For the first time in many months Tommy felt a sense of dreamy happiness stealing over him. He had found his mother, and, what was more, he had met his father under circumstances which induced him to like him better than he had done at their first interview. The result of Tommy's venturing into the cave was certainly such as to surprise him greatly, for he was far from thinking that Capt. Jordan, the famous freebooter, was his father, and that his mother was living with him of her own choice instead of being confined as a prisoner, which all supposed. Thompson, or Jordan, was very anxious to quit the life he was leading and had promised to do so shortly, at the solicitations of his wife, and he wished to go further west. Tommy's mother added her entreaties to those of his father that he would accompany them, and having no tie to bind him to Smithers, he consented. Little Alice had quite lost all her haughtiness, and, removed from the influence of Smithers, she found much to love in the character of her mother, and though she felt some repulsion toward Thompson, she grew to like him a little in time. Thompson was only waiting in the cave to make one more venture before he left it forever. He had received notice that a wagon containing bars of silver would leave Silver City on a certain day, and he intended to attack it as it passed through the canyon. With this amount of valuable property he thought he could do well as a farmer, and live a life of peace and contentment, but he forgot that ill-gained wealth rarely if ever does its possessor any good. It was early one morning when a shot was heard in the valley. Tommy sprang to his feet, he having been engaged in conversation with his mother. "What is that?" he cried. "Oh," replied his mother, with a heavy sigh, "it's an attack on some poor traveler. I wish all this work was over." "So do I," said Tommy. "Why do you stay here, mother, when you could go away so easily?" "I don't know what to do, my dear," replied she, in her usual weak-minded and undecided way. "Thompson is your father and legally my husband. I am afraid he would kill me if I thwarted him. As for Smithers, I despise him for his pride and his trickery. I wish I had never married."