of Essendine and the family name were in no
danger of extinction. But Lord Essendine lived for many years after
the termination of the Crimean war, and McKay was a general officer
and a Knight of the Bath before he became the fifteenth Earl of
Essendine.

Having thus disposed of the hero whose early career was so chequered
and eventful, I must add a word as to the fate of the other actors in
this veracious narrative.

First as to Hyde, who continued to be known by that name to his death,
preferring it greatly to the other, with its painful memories. He
remained a prisoner in the depot of the Prefecture only a few days.
The confession made by Ledantec and the evidence of other witnesses so
amply attested the innocence of the M. Gascoigne accused of the
Tinplate Street murder that his release followed as a matter of
course. Hyde waited in Paris to hear the issue of the trial of the
real offenders, and, painful as it was to be present at the sentence
of the woman who had once borne his name, he yet listened without
flinching to the whole story. After all, there was a certain relief in
knowing that he was well rid of her. It was little likely that the
Central prison to which she was consigned in perpetual "reclusion"
would ever surrender its prey.

He heard, too, with lively satisfaction, the sentence of his old foe,
Ledantec, to hard labour at the galleys for twenty years.

With these trials, and the penalties that followed them, he turned
down for ever the dark page of his life, and presently returned to
England, where he spent the remainder of his leave with his old friend
and comrade, McKay.

After that had expired he returned to the Crimea, and was present at
the closing scenes of the war. He continued to serve with the Royal
Picts for many years more--the regiment had become his home--and, as
he was in due course promoted to the post of paymaster, his position
and income were materially changed.

He lived to a green old age, retiring from the service full of rank
and honour. Colonel Hyde was long a notable figure at his club in Pall
Mall, which gained a new and very popular _chef_ when Anatole Belhomme
wrote him that he had been summarily dismissed from the French police.
Hyde spent a great portion of every year at Essendine Castle, after
his friend had succeeded to the estates, and there was no more
honoured guest than he at the coming of age of Rupert, Viscount
Lydstone, his godson.

The boy whom Mrs. Wild