s discovered. The man had a sister whose whereabouts was made out;
and she consented to receive the child--on condition that the bairn
should not come to her empty-handed. In order to get rid of this
burden, Mr. Wainwright with great difficulty made up thirty pounds.

And then it was discovered that the man's name was not Talbot.
What it was did not become known in Dorsetshire, for the poor wife
resumed her maiden name--with very little right to do so, as her kind
neighbours observed--till fortune so kindly gave her the privilege of
bearing another honourably before the world.

And then other inquiries, and almost endless search was made with
reference to that miscreant--not quite immediately--for at the moment
of the blow such search seemed to be but of little use; but after
some months, when the first stupor arising from their grief had
passed away, and when they once more began to find that the fields
were still green, and the sun warm, and that God's goodness was not
at an end.

And the search was made not so much with reference to him as to his
fate, for tidings had reached the parsonage that he was no more. The
period was that in which Paris was occupied by the allied forces,
when our general, the Duke of Wellington, was paramount in the French
capital, and the Tuileries and Champs Elysees were swarming with
Englishmen.

Report at the time was brought home that the soi-disant Talbot,
fighting his battles under the name of Chichester, had been seen and
noted in the gambling-houses of Paris; that he had been forcibly
extruded from some such chamber for non-payment of a gambling debt;
that he had made one in a violent fracas which had subsequently taken
place in the French streets; and that his body had afterwards been
identified in the Morgue.

Such was the story which bit by bit reached Mr. Wainwright's ears,
and at last induced him to go over to Paris, so that the absolute and
proof-sustained truth of the matter might be ascertained, and made
known to all men. The poor man's search was difficult and weary. The
ways of Paris were not then so easy to an Englishman as they have
since become, and Mr. Wainwright could not himself speak a word of
French. But nevertheless he did learn much; so much as to justify
him, as he thought, in instructing his daughter to wear a widow's
cap. That Talbot had been kicked out of a gambling-house in the Rue
Richelieu was absolutely proved. An acquaintance who had been with
him