"Will you be so good as to tell Miss Horn I should like to see her at once." The nurse, marking the eagerness with which the request was uttered, and observing the little shoe on the counterpane, perceived that the occasion was urgent, and departed on her errand with all speed. "I don't think he is any worse this morning," she said to Miss Jemima when she had delivered her message. "Indeed he seems, quite unaccountably, to be very much better. But it is evident something has happened." Without waiting to hear more, Miss Jemima hurried to her brother's room. Sitting up in bed, with a happy face, he was holding in his hand a dilapidated child's shoe, which he placed in his sister's hands as soon as she approached the bed. "Jemima, look at that!" he said joyously. Thinking it was the shoe which her brother had always preserved with so much care, she took it, and examined it with much concern. "Whoever can have cut it about like that?" she cried. "Cobbler" Horn hastened to rectify her mistake. "No, Jemima," he said, in a tone of reverent exultation; "it's the other shoe--the one we've been wanting to find all these years!" The first thought of Miss Jemima was that her brother had gone mad. Then she examined the shoe more closely. "To be sure!" she said. "How foolish of me! Those cuts were made long ago." As she spoke, she put her hand on the table at the bedside, to steady herself. "Brother," she demanded, in trembling tones, "where did you get this shoe? Did it come by the morning post?" "Cobbler" Horn answered deliberately. He would give his sister time to take in the meaning of his words. "It has been in the possession of Miss Owen. She brought it to me just now." "Miss Owen?" Miss Jemima's first impulse was towards indignation. What had Miss Owen been doing with the shoe? But the next moment, she reflected that there must be some reasonable explanation of the fact that the shoe had been in the possession of her brother's secretary--though what that explanation might be Miss Jemima could not, as yet, divine. "She has had it," resumed "Cobbler" Horn, in the same quiet tone as before, "ever since she was a little girl. She was wearing it when she was found by the good people by whom she was adopted." Then light came to Miss Jemima, clear and full. She grasped her brother's shoulder, and remembered his weakness only just in time to refrain from giving him a vigorous shake. "Brother, brother," she cried, "do you understand what your words may mean?" "Yes, Jemima--in part, at least. But we must make sure. First we will put the two shoes together, and see that they really are the same." "Why, surely, Thomas, you have no doubt?" "There seems little room for it, indeed; but we cannot make too sure!" He wanted to give himself time to become accustomed to the great joy which was dawning on his life. "You know where the other shoe is, Jemima?" "Yes, in the safe."