214

XI. THE CHEVALIER D'EON 238

XII. SAINT-GERMAIN THE DEATHLESS 256

XIII. THE MYSTERY OF THE KIRKS 277

XIV. THE END OF JEANNE DE LA MOTTE 297

PORTRAIT OF ELIZABETH CANNING. _Frontispiece._

HISTORICAL MYSTERIES

I

_THE CASE OF ELIZABETH CANNING_

Don't let your poor little
Lizzie be blamed!

THACKERAY.

'Everyone has heard of the case of Elizabeth Canning,' writes Mr. John
Paget; and till recently I agreed with him. But five or six years ago
the case of Elizabeth Canning repeated itself in a marvellous way, and
then but few persons of my acquaintance had ever heard of that
mysterious girl.

The recent case, so strange a parallel to that of 1753, was this: In
Cheshire lived a young woman whose business in life was that of a
daily governess. One Sunday her family went to church in the morning,
but she set off to skate, by herself, on a lonely pond. She was never
seen of or heard of again till, in the dusk of the following Thursday,
her hat was found outside of the door of her father's farmyard. Her
friend discovered her further off in a most miserable condition,
weak, emaciated, and with her skull fractured. Her explanation was
that a man had seized her on the ice, or as she left it, had dragged
her across the fields, and had shut her up in a house, from which she
escaped, crawled to her father's home, and, when she found herself
unable to go further, tossed her hat towards the farm door. Neither
such a man as she described, nor the house in which she had been
imprisoned, was ever found. The girl's character was excellent,
nothing pointed to her condition being the result _d'une orgie
echevelee_; but the neighbours, of course, made insinuations, and a
lady of my acquaintance, who visited the girl's mother, found herself
almost alone in placing a charitable construction on the adventure.

My theory was that the girl had fractured her skull by a fall on the
ice, had crawled to and lain in an unvisited outhouse of the farm, and
on that Thursday night was wandering out, in a distraught state, not
wandering in. Her story would be the result of her cerebral
condition--concussion of the brain.

It was while people were discussing this affair, a second edition of
Elizabeth Canning's, that one found out how forgotten was Elizabeth.

On January 1, 1753, El