Something makes me credit it--a strange little notion that I have
carried that child's picture in my own mind."
"We are even, then," I answered, "only you are thinking more things than
you say. That isn't fair."
But she only nodded her head inscrutably.
CHAPTER XXVI
A LITTLE MYSTERY IS SOLVED
The significance of Miss Lansdale's manner, rather than her words, ran
through my darkened thoughts like a thread as I played the game that
night. After a third defeat this thread seemed to guide me to daylight
from a tortuously winding cavern. At first the thing was of an amazing
simplicity.
In a far room was a chest filled with forgotten odds and ends that had
come back with me years before. I ran to it, and from under bundles of
letters, old family trinkets, a canteen, a pair of rusty pistols, and
other such matters, I brought forth an ambrotype--the kind that was
mounted in a black case of pressed rubber and closed with a spring.
But even as I held the thing, flushed with my discovery, another
recollection cooled me, and the structure of my discovery tumbled as
quickly as it had built itself. Little Miss had found her own picture
when she found _him_.
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