will you let me know something
about yourself? You are, I take it, some twenty years of age?"

"I am but a few months past nineteen."

"By your figure, I should have put you as three years older; by
your face, two years. You must have been fortunate, indeed, to
have gained the protection both of Lord Godolphin and the Earl of
Galway. No less than this would have sufficed to gain for you this
rescript of Her Majesty.

"And now, sir, please to give me an outline of your case, as to
the nature of which I am, at present, entirely ignorant."

"I have put it down in writing, sir," Gerald said, handing him the
third copy of his statement.

"It will take me some time to read this, Mr. O'Carroll, and I
would rather do so alone, and ask you any question that may occur
to me afterwards. Will you therefore call upon me again, in an
hour's time?"

Upon Gerald's return, the counsellor said:

"It is a strange story, Mr. O'Carroll, and a very disgraceful one.
You allude, I see, to testimonies of Irish officers in the French
service as to your likeness to the late Mr. James O'Carroll. Will
you please let me see them?"

"Here they are, sir, together with a sworn statement by my nurse."

The lawyer read the documents through carefully.

"The testimony of the Duke of Berwick, and of the other honourable
and well-known Irish gentlemen, as to the striking likeness
between yourself and Mr. James O'Carroll, cannot but carry immense
weight in the minds of all unprejudiced persons. They prove too,
conclusively, that James O'Carroll left an infant boy behind him,
and the statement of the nurse goes a long way to prove you are
that son; and I think that this is substantiated by the conduct of
John O'Carroll; first in receiving you and undertaking your care;
secondly, in the neglect, and I should almost say the dislike, he
manifested towards the child he had sheltered; and thirdly, in the
extraordinary step that he, a professedly loyal subject of Her
Majesty, took in sending you off to enlist in the brigade composed
of the devoted adherents of the son of James the Second.

"No doubt, at any rate, can arise that you are the child brought
by this Mrs. Rooney to Kilkargan. That can be proved beyond all
question; and the fact that your nurse was sent off without having
any conversation save with John O'Carroll himself, would show how
anxious he was that no one but himself should know her errand.

"I must say that you have shown great a