—here again the unusual circumstances that fitted into Opal's plans—he was struck by the personality of the girl from the Oregon wildwood. Such a girl must have kept a diary that might make interesting reading. Certainly there was a diary, and it was all that Sedgwick had expected and more, much more. Opal, with no thought of selling it to the Atlantic, had a background all prepared and plans all laid to make the impossible seem probable.
With the publication of the diary came the first intimation to relatives and friends that Opal claimed foster parentage.
Opal was born, according to the Whiteleys, at Colton, Washington, 22 years before the publication of the diary. Opal herself said, at the time of its publication, that she was born in a far land where she had roamed the fields with an angel mother and an angel father, that while the child of the Whiteleys was being taken to Wendling, Lane County, Oregon, the Opal we know was put in place of the Opal born to the Whiteleys. The Whiteley Opal, it was claimed, fell into water while the exchange was being made and the mother left with the foster child without knowing that her own had been saved. During the publication of the diary Opal wrote that the first Opal had been saved from the water and that trace had been secured of her, but nothing developed.
If the Opal we know is not a daughter of the Whiteleys, it was by a most remarkable combination of circumstances that the foster child, substituted without advance arrangements, bore such a strong resemblance to members of the Whiteley family that even
