Now that she is gone, and he knows it, I must at once make it secure in some other way.  To-morrow, if you will allow me, I will come again and bring witnesses.  No other man in Dalton would be so worthy of the trust.  Thousands of dollars have almost made themselves in ways planned and carried out by Marian Douglass, who held this money both for me and from me, but now a part of this must be used to find my wife and my daughter Nellie, and then to run down their persecutors, for I have been a tool, simply, in the hands of those who took what I had and who have been trying for years to get the rest.  If nothing happens to me to-night I will come to-morrow morning, after that we may tell the town who it was who tried to spoil the fair name of Dalton.”

He pressed Dorothy’s hand to his lips as he left.  She felt a tear fall upon it; and she knew that all her prayers and all her efforts to save this man from his evil ways had not been in vain, and with the happiness that comes always in the knowledge of good accomplished, a new resolve came into her heart—­she would some day find Nellie Burlock.

CHAPTER VI

AT THE SWING

The strange story of the reformed man filled Dorothy’s brain with exciting thoughts that night, and it was almost morning when she finally fell asleep.  Even then she dreamed of all;—­the fortune her father was to have in trust, the wicked man who had been trying to get it, and the poor wife and child who were hidden away somewhere, perhaps now starving.  In her dreams she became Nellie, and she tried, oh, so hard, to find her own father, the dear major.  The worry of it even in sleep gave Dorothy a severe headache, and when she awoke she found her nerves still throbbing and her brow hot and feverish.

“Oh, I’ll be so glad to go to school to-day,” she thought.  “I am tired of all this worry, and it will be good to be back with the girls again.”

“Doro, let me in!  Let me in!” little Roger was calling at her door, and before she had a chance to finish dressing, her little brother had his soft white arms about her neck.

“Now, don’t you look.  You can’t see until I’ve given you a quart of kisses, then you have to promise not to cry.”

“Cry?  What for?” she asked.

“Cross your heart, first,” he insisted.

Then she saw that his curls were gone.

“Oh, darling!” she exclaimed, “who did it?”

“Jake, the barber.  And daddy said so.  He said you should not bother with tangles any more.  Now don’t you dare cry.  You promised.”

The girl took the little boy in her arms.  Why did they do it just that day, when her head ached, and she had so many worries?  Those beautiful curls!  How she had loved them!

“Now Doro, you are going to cry, ’cause your eyes look like polly-wogs.  And you must be glad that I’m a man, like Joe, now,” and the boy sprang from her arms, and stood up like a “major” before her.