both children at once, holding the locket in her hands, and
laughing and crying both together, he, too, was bewildered.

"What in the world is the matter, Julie?" he cried.

For answer, she pointed to the face in the locket. "Leonie!
Leonie!" she cried. "They are my own sister's children! Surely
the hand of God is in this!"

Her husband looked at the locket. "So it is! So it is!" he said
in astonishment. "I thought at first you had gone crazy,"

"See!" cried his wife. "It's her wedding-gown, and afterward she
gave me those very beads she has around her neck! I have them
yet!" She rushed from the room and returned in a moment with the
beads in her hand.

Meanwhile Jan and Marie had stood still, too astonished to do
more than stare from one amazed and excited face to the other, as
their new father and mother gazed, first at them, and then at the
locket, and last at the beads, scarcely daring to believe the
testimony of their own eyes. "To think," cried Madame Dujardin at
last, "that I should not have known! But there are many Van Hoves
in Belgium, and it never occurred to me that they could be my own
flesh and blood. It is years since I have heard from Leonie. In
fact, I hardly knew she had any children, our lives have been so
different. Oh, it is all my fault," she cried, weeping again.
"But if I have neglected her, I will make it up to her children!
It may be, oh, it is just possible that she is still alive, and
that she may yet write to me after all these years! Sorrow