ason for it. "I think I could prove that;
I really think I could prove that. There was my cousin that we lived
with in Edinburgh, Violet Strachan, one of the witnesses to my
marriage. She saw a great deal of my child, for, till we went to
London, we lived in her house, and Frank was born there. She knew that
he took convulsion fits very badly, and that he had a brown mole on his
shoulder that this boy cannot have. I don't know of any other
birth-mark," said Mrs. Peck.

"And this woman lived in Edinburgh. Do you think she is alive? Was she
older or younger than you?"

"Oh, older by ten years," said Mrs. Peck, feeling the ground give way
under her. "I hope she is not dead--she lived in 57, New Street,
leading down to the Canongate, up three pair of stairs; her husband was
a saddler, and she kept lodgers. His name was George. He would
recollect something about Frank. Peck could swear that I have told him
over and over again that my boy was dead, and that the boy Cross Hall
brought up was none of mine."

"But Peck's word is worth nothing," said Brandon.

"Betsy could say something of the kind. I am sure she must have heard
us hint at it often, but she is not sharp. Perhaps she did not notice."

"Does no one else know anything about it?" said Brandon, in despair.

"No one;--but surely I ain't got no cause to take such blame on myself,
if it was not true," said Mrs. Peck, sulkily.

"You unfortunately had a motive--two strong motives. A deathbed
confession, for no hope of gain or revenge, might have carried
weight--but this carries none. The only accomplice of your crime is
dead. The mother from whom you stole the child is probably dead also,
and at any rate gone out of England--you do not even know her name, or
that of the ship she sailed in. The witness who you think could prove
the non-identity of the present possessor of Cross Hall is most likely
dead also, and if alive must be an old woman who has probably forgotten
the trifling circumstance of the existence of a mole on a child after
thirty-five years and more--and people outgrow these peculiarities. You
have not the ghost of a case for the Melvilles. Hogarth might give you
something for the chance that you are speaking truth, to get rid of
your claims for ever, and the satisfaction of feeling that you are
nothing to him."

"That's what I ought to have done. Peck always said I was too hasty;
and his words has come true," said Mrs. Peck. "I might have got
someth