Beadle's Dime Novels No. 131 — page 76: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

80 THE WRECKER’S DAUGHTER. in my room at home, a sandal-wood box, the twin of this. Not any of those things are of French or English manufac- ture. The ship must have sailed from some East Indian port, and your mother, Tangee, was probably a native of the Orient. Your eyes and features. are Singhalese, and the fact that your complexion is a few shades less brown may be accounted for by the.probability of your father having been an European or an American. I conjecture that he was bringing his foreign wife home, when they encountered the fatal storm. These are Ceylon pearls, I know.” Tangee twined the gleaming strings about her arms. “ Tt is sad to be situated as I am,” she said. “You will soon have a father, and he will love you, I'm sure,” returned Oliver, tofiched by her melancholy. “Is it possible that there is no scrap of writing, no picture, no let- tering on the trunk, to afford the slightest clue ?” He obtained a piece of paper and rubbed the mould from the outside, carefully examining it. Upon one end he found, nearly obliterated, some initials. “Look at these, Tangee,” he said ; “ unless my eyes deceive me, I make them out to be ‘O. G’” “ Why, those are your initials, Oliver. But that is certain- ly what those are! O. G.! A strange coincidence, is it not ?” “Tt may be more than a ctiacidence,” he replied, in a whisper. The blood peidadbinthasentancedede he got up and went for a glass of water. A dim, an almost vanished memory of the past, had suddenly blazed out in every line and tint, with a wonderful fullness of meaning, like invisible writing exposed to the heart which brings out its characters. Still, he might be utterly mistaken, and the picture in his memory was but one of a series; he could not recall enough - Coming back, he began again to examine the trunk. There was a place where the lining was loose from the body, having apparently become so from being wet. He tore this piece of lining away, and letter dropped out, yellow with age. seized upon it with aecry. Her hands trembled so ~ that she could hardly hold it. What might it not reveal ? CoMehgokss com