he has not
been heard of. The solicitors with whom she had corresponded have long
since ceased to receive tidings of her. The belief in her death was so
complete that her father, a well-known citizen of Dublin, who died
two years back, bequeathed his vast fortune to various charitable
institutions, alleging his childless condition as the cause.

"I have told you how, originally, my client, then a mere boy, became
separated from her he had ever regarded as his mother; I have traced him
through some, but far from the whole, of the strange incidents of his
eventful career; and it now only remains that I should speak of the
extraordinary accident by which he came upon the clew to his long
sought-for, long despaired-of, inheritance.

"A short statement will suffice here, since the witnesses I mean to
call before you will amply elucidate this part of my case. It was while
travelling with despatches to the North of Europe my client formed
acquaintance with a certain Count Ysaffich, at that time himself
employed in the diplomatic service; and though at the period a warm
friendship grew up between them, it was not till after the lapse of many
years that the Count came to know that a large mass of papers--copies of
documents drawn out by Raper, and which had come into the Count's hands
in a manner I shall relate to you--actually bore reference to his former
acquaintance,--the casual intimate of a journey.

"These two men, thrown together by one of the most extraordinary chances
of fortune, sit down to recount their lives to each other. Beside the
fire of an humble chalet, in a forest, Carew hears again the story he
had once listened to in his infancy; the very tale his dear mother had
repeated to him in the midst of the Alps, he now hears from the lips
of one almost a stranger. Names once familiar, but long forgotten, come
back to him. The very sounds thrilled through his heart like as the
notes of the Swiss melody awaken in the far-away wanderer thoughts
of home and fatherland. In an instant he throws off the apathy of his
former life, he ceases to be the sport and plaything of fortune, and
devotes himself heart and soul to the restitution of the ancient name of
his house and the long dormant honors of a distinguished family.

"We cannot," writes the journalist, "undertake at this late hour to
follow the learned counsel into the minute enumeration he went into,
of small circumstances of proof, memoranda of conversations, scra