ed the jury
to follow him in the details of a brief and not very complicated story,
every step of which he would confirm and establish by evidence.

The studious simplicity of his narrative was immense art, and though he
carefully avoided even a word that could be called high-flown, he made
the story of Montague Bramleigh's courtship of the beautiful Italian
girl one of the most touching episodes I ever listened to.

The marriage was, of course, the foundation of the whole claim, and he
arrayed all his proofs of it with great skill. The recognition in your
grandfather's letters, and the tone of affection in which they were
written, his continual reference to her in his life, left little if any
doubt on the minds of the jury, even though there was nothing formal or
official to show that the ceremony of marriage had passed; he reminded
the jury that the defence would rely greatly on this fact, but the
fact of a missing registry-book was neither so new nor so rare in this
country as to create any astonishment, and when he offered proof that
the church and the vestry-room had been sacked by the rebels in '98, the
evidence seemed almost superfluous. The birth and baptism of the child
he established thoroughly; and here he stood on strong grounds, for
the infant was christened at Brussels by the Protestant chaplain of the
Legation at the Hague, and he produced a copy of the act of registry,
stating the child to be son of Montague Bramleigh, of Cossenden Manor,
and Grosvenor Square, London, and of En-richetta his wife. Indeed, as
Lawson declared, if these unhappy foreigners had ever even a glimmering
suspicion that the just rights of this poor child were to be assailed
and his inheritance denied him, they could not have taken more careful
and cautious steps to secure his succession than the simple but
excellent precautions they had adopted.

The indignation of Lami at what he deemed the unfeeling and heartless
conduct of Montague Bramleigh--his cold reception of the news of his
son's birth, and the careless tone in which he excused himself from
going over to the christening--rose to such a pitch that he swore the
boy should never bear his father's name, nor ever in any way be beholden
to him, and "this rash oath it was that has carried misery down to
another generation, and involved in misfortune others not more blameless
nor more truly to be pitied than he who now seeks redress at your
hands." This was the last sentence he