"Does one forget the clothes that their child wears when it was kidnaped? Why, it's only through its clothes that they can find it." "Wait until we hear what he says before we think anything." It was not an easy thing for me to ask my father how I was dressed on the day that I was stolen. If I had put the question casually without any underthought, it would have been simple enough. As it was I was timid. Then one day when the cold sleet had driven me home earlier than usual, I took my courage in both hands, and broached the subject that was causing me so much anxiety. At my question my father looked me full in the face. But I looked back at him far more boldly than I imagined that I could at this moment. Then he smiled. There was something hard and cruel in the smile but still it was a smile. "On the day that you were stolen from us," he said slowly, "you wore a flannel robe, a linen robe, a lace bonnet, white woolen shoes, and a white embroidered cashmere pelisse. Two of your garments Were marked F.D., Francis Driscoll, your real name, but this mark was cut out by the woman who stole you, for she hoped that in this way you would never be found. I'll show you your baptismal certificates which, of course, I still have." He searched in a drawer and soon brought forth a big paper which he handed to me. "If you don't mind," I said with a last effort, "Mattia will translate it for me." "Certainly." Mattia translated it as well as he could. It appeared that I was born on Thursday, August the 2nd, and that I was the son of John Driscoll and Margaret Grange, his wife. What further proofs could I ask? "That's all very fine," said Mattia that night, when we were in our caravan, "but how comes it that peddlers were rich enough to give their children lace bonnets and embroidered pelisses? Peddlers are not so rich as that!" "It is because they were peddlers that they could get those things cheaper." Mattia whistled, but he shook his head, then again he whispered: "You're not that Driscoll's baby, but you're the baby that Driscoll stole!" I was about to reply but he had already climbed up into his bed. CHAPTER XXVIII A MYSTERIOUS STRANGER If I had been in Mattia's place, I should perhaps have had as much imagination as he, but I felt in my position that it was wrong for me to have such thoughts. It had been proved beyond a doubt that Mr. Driscoll was my father. I could not look at the matter from the same point of view as Mattia. He might doubt ... but I must not. When he tried to make me believe as he did, I told him to be silent. But he was pig-headed and I was not always able to get the better of his obstinacy. "Why are you dark and all the rest of the family fair?" he would ask repeatedly. "How was it that poor people could dress their baby in fine laces and embroidery?" was another often repeated question. And I could only reply by putting a question myself.