In more senses than one the day had come to Darry.
He heard low voices, and then someone came through the door, someone whose eyes were fastened hungrily upon his face.
Darry struggled to sit up, and was just in time to feel a pair of arms around his neck and have his poor aching head drawn lovingly upon the bosom of the mother whom he had not known since infancy.
Later on, in fragments, Darry learned the whole story. It was all very wonderful, and yet simple enough.
The old man whom he remembered so well, and who had told him to call him uncle, was in reality a brother of his mother.
He had quarreled with his sister Elizabeth's husband, after abusing his kindness, and to cancel what he called a debt, had actually stolen the only child of the man he had wronged and hated.
An old story, yet happening just as frequently in these modern days as in times of old, for men have the same passions, and there is nothing new under the sun.
Everything that money could do was done to find the man and the little boy he had kidnapped, but he proved too cunning for them all, and although several times traces were found of his being at some foreign city, when a hunt was made he had again vanished.
So the years came and went, and the child's mother was left a widow.
Hope never deserted her heart, though it must have grown fainter as time passed on, and all traces of the wicked child-stealer seemed swallowed up in mystery.
Paul had known of her great trouble, and it was the remarkable resemblance of Darry to a picture he had seen of his uncle Rudolph as a boy that first startled him.
Then came the story about the waif, and this gave him strong hopes that by the wonderful favor of Providence he had been enabled to come across the long-lost boy, his own cousin.
Their happiness was subdued, for there had been lives lost in the storm, a number of passengers and crew having been swept from the deck of the steamer by the giant waves before the coming of the life savers.
As the storm subsided by noon, our little party, increased by Abner's presence, was enabled to cross the still rough sound in the staunch motor-boat of Paul, and to Nancy's amazement appeared at her humble little home.
She heard the story of Darry's great good fortune with mingled emotions, for while she could not but rejoice with him in that he had found a mother, still, in a way, it seemed to the poor woman as though she had been bereaved a second time, for she was beginning to love the boy who had come into her life to take the place of Joe.
