"I will tell you as soon as you have answered a few questions. I must make sure first that I have got hold of the right man." He pulled out a drawer, and taking from it a typewritten sheet, read his question from it. "Your full name?" "John Farrow Norman." "Parents living?" "Both dead, sir." "Father's name?" "John Goadby Norman." "Mother's name?" "Phoebe Farrow." "Place of your birth?" "Cartonsville, New York." There were other questions of a similar tenor, and Jack's answers were apparently satisfactory to Mr. Delamare. He folded the paper, and searched in the drawer for something else. His next question was an odd one. "Are you wearing your father's watch?" "Why, yes," stammered Jack. It was the one article of value that he possessed. He unhooked it from its chain and passed it over. The banker opened the back of the case as if aware of what was to be found there, and the smiling face of Jack's mother as a bride was revealed. From the drawer he took an old-fashioned cabinet photograph, and compared it with the picture in the watch case. Jack catching sight of the second picture was startled out of his diffidence. "My mother's picture! Where did you get that?" Mr. Delamare showed him the two faces side by side. "Not the same photograph, but unquestionably the same woman. You may have both now." He handed them over. The picture he had taken from the drawer showed Jack's mother at an earlier period, just graduating into womanhood with all the touching innocence of youth about her. Jack's eyes filled. "What does it mean?" he murmured. "One more question," said Mr. Delamare. "Give me a brief account of yourself as far back as you can remember." Jack did so, wonderingly, and the banker checked his story with another typewritten sheet that he held. "That will do," he said at last. "I'm satisfied." "How did you learn all this?" asked Jack. "I didn't think anybody in the world was interested what jobs I had or where I lived." "One never knows," was the smiling answer. "Write your name and I'll tell you." Jack obeyed. The banker compared it with a signature he had. "Now then," he said. "How would you like to be rich?" Jack stared at him in a daze. Delamare laughed. "Rich beyond the dreams of avarice! Worth eighty million dollars in fact." "Eighty million!" muttered Jack stupidly. "As you sit there this minute you are worth eighty million--perhaps more." "Where--did I get it?" stammered Jack helplessly. "Silas Gyde bequeathed you all he possessed." Jack's face was a study in amazement, incredulity--not to say downright alarm. At the sight Mr. Delamare threw back his head and laughed a peal. "Don't take it so hard! You'll live it down!" "What was I to Silas Gyde?" murmured Jack. "I don't know the whole story. Mr. Gyde took no man on earth into his confidence. I judge, though, that he was an unsuccessful suitor for your mother. The affair must have cut deep, for he never married."