, for I
listened at the door, and heard what the butler said to ye when he gied
ye the bairn; and think ye I didna see ye carry it along the passage as
ye left? Sae far I could understand; but when I heard nurse say the
bairn was dead, Mrs. Kemp say the bairn was still-born, and Cowie
declare it was better it was dead and awa, I couldna comprehend this
ava; nor do I weel yet; but we just thought that as there was something
wrang between master and my lady, he wanted us to believe that the bairn
was dead, for very shame o' being thought the father, when maybe he
wasna. And then he was so guid to me and my neighbour Anne Dickson,--ye
mind o' her--puir soul, she's dead too,--that we couldna, for the very
heart o' us, say a word o' what we knew. But now when Mr. Napier is
dead, and the brother o' that wicked Jezebel, Isbel Napier, may try to
take the property frae Henney, wha I aye kenned as a Napier, with the
very nose and een o' the father, I have spoken out; and may the Lord gie
the right to whom the right is due!"

"It's all right," said the writer, after he had jotted with a pencil the
evidence of Jean, as well as that of the nurse; "and if we could find
this John Cowie, we might so fortify the orphan's rights, as to defy
Miss Napier and her brother, and Mr. Dallas, and all the witnesses they
can bring."

"Ay," continued the woman, "but I doubt if you'll catch him. He left Mr.
Napier's service about ten years ago, and I never heard mair o' him."

"Nor I either," said Mrs. Hislop.

"Well, we must search for him," added Mr. White; "for that man alone, so
far as I can see, is he who will unravel this strange business."

And thus the day's work finished. The writer parted for Mill's Court,
and Mrs. Hislop, filled with doubts, hopes, and anxieties, sought her
humble dwelling in Toddrick's Wynd, where Henney waited for her with all
the solicitude of a daughter; but a word did not escape her lips that
might carry to the girl's mind a suspicion that the golden cord of their
supposed relationship ran a risk of being severed, even with the
eventual condition that one, if not both of the divisions, would be
transmuted into a string of diamonds.

Meanwhile the agent was in his own house, revolving all the points of a
puzzle more curious than any that had yet come within the scope of his
experience. Sometimes he felt confidence, and at other times despair;
and of course he had the consolation, which belongs to all litigants,