me I had put little faith
in the whole story of this youth; and there is then really such?'

'There is, or at least there was, your Eminence. I remember as well as
if it was yesterday the evening he came to the palace to see the Prince.
A poor countryman of my own, a Carthusian, brought him, and took
him back again to the college. The boy was afterward sent to a villa
somewhere near Orvieto.'

'Was the youth acknowledged by his Royal Highness as his son?' asked the
Cardinal.

'The Prince never spoke of him to me till the day before his death. He
then said, "Can you find out that Carthusian for me, Kelly?--I should
like to speak with him." I told him that he had long since left Rome
and even Italy. The last tidings of him came from Ireland, where he was
living as a dependant on some reduced family.

'"There is no time to fetch him from Ireland," said his Highness; "and
yet, Kelly, I 'd give a thousand pounds that he were here." He then
asked me if I remembered a certain boy, dressed like a colleger of
the Jesuits, who came one night long ago to the palace with this same
Carthusian.

'I said, yes; that though his Royal Highness believed that I was away
from Rome that night, I came back post-haste from Albano; and finding
myself in one of the corridors, I waited till Fra Luke came out from his
interview, with the boy beside him.

'"True, true, Kelly; I meant you to have known nothing of this visit. So
then you saw the boy? What thought you of him?"

'"I saw and marked him well, for his fair hair and skin were so
distinctively English, they made a deep impression upon me."

'"He had the mouth, too, Kelly--a little pouting and over full-lipped.
Did you mark that?"

'"No, sire; I did not observe him so closely."

'"How poor and ragged the child was! his very shoes were broken. Did you
see his shoes?--and that frail bit of serge was all his covering against
the keen blast. O George," cried he, as his lip shook with emotion,
"what would you say if that poor boy, all wretched and wayworn as
you saw him, were the true heir of a throne, and that the proudest in
Europe? What a lesson for human greatness that! It was a scurvy trick
you played me that night, sir," said he, quickly changing, for his
moods were ever thus, and you never could guess how long any theme would
engage him--"a scurvy trick, sir, to pry into what your master desired
you should not know. I had my own good reasons for what I did, and
it ill became