ssels, and
mentioned the name of the merchant with whom it was lying for poor
Gertrude's use. He did not even know whether she had a child or no, or
whether she was alive or dead; but got these facts easily out of honest
Pastoureau's answers to him. When he heard that she was in a convent, he
said he hoped to end his days in one himself, should he survive his wife,
whom he hated, and had been forced by a cruel father to marry; and when he
was told that Gertrude's son was alive, and actually in London, 'I
started,' says he; 'for then, damme, my wife was expecting to lie-in, and
I thought should this old Put, my father-in-law, run rusty, here would be
a good chance to frighten him.'

"He expressed the deepest gratitude to the Pastoureau family for their
care of the infant; you were now near six years old; and on Pastoureau
bluntly telling him, when he proposed to go that instant and see the
darling child, that they never wished to see his ill-omened face again
within their doors; that he might have the boy, though they should all be
very sorry to lose him; and that they would take his money, they being
poor, if he gave it; or bring him up, by God's help, as they had hitherto
done, without: he acquiesced in this at once, with a sigh, said, 'Well,
'twas better that the dear child should remain with friends who had been
so admirably kind to him'; and in his talk to me afterwards, honestly
praised and admired the weaver's conduct and spirit; owned that the
Frenchman was a right fellow, and he, the Lord have mercy upon him, a sad
villain.

"Your father," Mr. Holt went on to say, "was good-natured with his money
when he had it; and having that day received a supply from his uncle, gave
the weaver ten pieces with perfect freedom, and promised him further
remittances. He took down eagerly Pastoureau's name and place of abode in
his table-book, and when the other asked him for his own, gave, with the
utmost readiness, his name as Captain Thomas, New Lodge, Penzance,
Cornwall; he said he was in London for a few days only on business
connected with his wife's property; described her as a shrew, though a
woman of kind disposition; and depicted his father as a Cornish squire, in
an infirm state of health, at whose death he hoped for something handsome,
when he promised richly to reward the admirable protector of his child,
and to provide for the boy. 'And by Gad, sir,' he said to me in his
strange laughing way, 'I ordered a piece of