Next morning, for want of a better plan, they resolved to look for Mysie in the thoroughfares, the father taking the New Town and the brother taking the Old Town. The unhappy old man spent most of the day in wandering up and down the streets, looking in vain amid the throng of strange and unsympathetic faces for those familiar kindly eyes that had been the light of his home. Jaded and perplexed, he had returned to his hotel in the early afternoon, when the landlord, whom he had taken into his confidence the night before, laid the advertisement sheet of a newspaper before him, and pointed to a paragraph headed "Found Drowned." He glanced rapidly over it, and to his horror saw that it was a description of his lost daughter. There could be no mistake. The age, the complexion, the features, the hair, all corresponded.
Like one stunned by a heavy blow on the head, the old man sat still for a moment. Then, driven by a feeling made up of hope and fear, he hurried to the police office in the High Street, all unconscious of the traffic that rumbled and buzzed around him. In a short time he found himself in the death-chamber, in presence of a prostrate and shrouded form, lying so terribly still and quiet; and in another second the facecloth was removed, and his worst fears were realised. Yes! in the stiff waxen mask he recognised that countenance which had so lately been the joy of everyone who looked upon it. He stood gazing at it like a man in a trance, till his pent-up feelings found vent in tears. Then it was that there occurred a most extraordinary circumstance--what would be deemed incredible, were it not vouched for by the chroniclers of the time. The door opened, and, in company with his son, there appeared the very woman whose fate he was bewailing and whose dead form he was gazing upon. She came forward, and her face took on a look of intense surprise at what she saw.
"Father!" she exclaimed, "what's wrang wi' ye? And what's this? mercy! what's this? can it be me? No! and yet it's awfu' like, but, no! no! Father, that's no' me! this is me." And she took both his hands and kissed him, and in this way convinced him that she was his own daughter.
And who was this dead woman that was Mysie's double? The question was never answered. She went to a pauper's grave unclaimed by anyone.