possible."

"By will!" said Mrs. Peck, looking aghast; "my newspaper said he was
the heir-at-law; but it would never have been left to him if Harry had
not thought Frank was his son."

"It was left to Francis Ormistown, otherwise Hogarth, for fifteen years
clerk in the Bank of Scotland," said Brandon, reading from Elsie's
memorandum.

"But he is neither Ormistown nor Hogarth, nor Francis, neither," said
Mrs. Peck, triumphantly. "He can claim nothing. Francis Ormistown, or
Hogarth, is dead--dead thirty-four years ago: this man has no name that
any one knows. I will swear that the child Harry Hogarth took out of my
arms was neither his child nor mine, and that he had no right to
inherit Cross Hall. The nieces must have it; they were his nearest
relations. None of his brothers left no children, and the Melvilles
should get the estate, and I should get my thousand pounds."

"I wish your oath was worth more," said Brandon, regretfully. "I wish
you could prove what you state as a fact; but all you have told me is
absolutely worthless in a court of law. You say you told a parcel of
lies to one whom you should have kept faith with, for pecuniary
advantage, and now you want to contradict them in hopes of getting a
thousand pounds from the Misses Melville, and in order to revenge
yourself on the boy whom you so cruelly injured. I am sorry to say
nobody would believe a word of this story except myself; and I do."

"But could you not look up in old newspapers to see if there was any
stir made at the time about a changed child?" said Mrs. Peck, trembling
with excitement and disappointment. She had been so long accustomed to
look on this secret as capital to herself: her mother, and Peck, and
herself had always thought that in case of Mr. Hogarth's death a good
deal might be got out of the heir; and she had not parted with the
certificate of her marriage, or of her child's baptismal register, in
case he had left no will, and the heirat-law had to be found. She had
sent copies of these documents, very admirably executed by a Sydney
friend, who had been sent across the ocean for similar instances of
skill, to Mr. Hogarth, so that he did not think she had any proof to
bring forward to support her claims to be Francis' mother; but it was
only recently that she had thought of making more favourable terms with
regard to her other secret with the disinherited nieces than with the
ungrateful heir, and their coming so near just when sh