urt-martial, and
broke! But you know all this, perhaps?"

"My poor father! Only in part; I knew that he had been dismissed the
army,--I believed unjustly. He was a soldier, and yet he dared to think
for himself and be humane!"

"But my uncle had left him a legacy; it brought no blessing,--none of
that old man's gold did. Where are they all now,--Dalibard, Susan, and
her fair-faced husband,--where? Vernon is in his grave,--but one son of
many left! Gabriel Varney lives, it is true, and I! But that gold,--yea,
in our hands there was a curse on it! Walter Ardworth had his legacy.
His nature was gay; if disgraced in his profession, he found men to pity
and praise him,--Fools of Party like himself. He lived joyously, drank
or gamed, or lent or borrowed,--what matters the wherefore? He was in
debt; he lived at last a wretched, shifting, fugitive life, snatching
bread where he could, with the bailiffs at his heels. Then, for a short
time, we met again."

Lucretia's brow grew black as night as her voice dropped at that last
sentence, and it was with a start that she continued,--

"In the midst of this hunted existence, Walter Ardworth appeared, late
one night, at Mr. Fielden's with an infant. He seemed--so says Mr.
Fielden--ill, worn, and haggard. He entered into no explanations with
respect to the child that accompanied him, and retired at once to rest.
What follows, Mr. Fielden, at my request, has noted down. Read, and see
what claim you have to the honourable parentage so vaguely ascribed to
you."

As she spoke, Madame Dalibard opened a box on her table, drew forth a
paper in Fielden's writing, and placed it in Ardworth's hand. After some
preliminary statement of the writer's intimacy with the elder Ardworth,
and the appearance of the latter at his house, as related by Madame
Dalibard, etc., the document went on thus:--

The next day, when my poor guest was still in bed, my servant Hannah
came to advise me that two persons were without, waiting to see me.
As is my wont, I bade them be shown in. On their entrance (two rough,
farmer-looking men they were, who I thought might be coming to hire my
little pasture field), I prayed them to speak low, as a sick gentleman
was just overhead. Whereupon, and without saying a word further, the two
strangers made a rush from the room, leaving me dumb with amazement; in
a few moments I heard voices and a scuffle above. I recovered myself,
and thinking robbers had entered my peaceful