ore by references to many
whose testimonials could trace, step by step, the child's record from
its birth to its transfer to Jasper, and by the brief but distinct
avowal, in tremulous lines, writ by Jasper himself. As a skein crossed
and tangled, when the last knot is loosened, slips suddenly free, so
this long bewildering mystery now became clear as a commonplace! What
years of suffering Darrell might have been saved had he himself seen and
examined the nurse--had his inquiry been less bounded by the fears of
his pride--had the great lawyer not had himself for a client!

Darrell silently returned to Alban Morley the papers over which he had
cast his eye as they walked slowly to and fro the sloping banks of the
lake.

"It is well," said he, glancing fondly, as Fairthorn had glanced before
him, towards the old House, now freed from doom, and permitted to last
its time. "It is well," he repeated, looking away towards that part of
the landscape where he could just catch a glimpse of Sophy's light form
beyond the barbed thorn-tree; "it is well," he repeated thrice with a
sigh. "Poor human nature! Alban, can you conceive it? I, who once so
dreaded that that poor child should prove to be of my blood, now, in
knowing that she is not, feel a void, a loss! To Lionel I am so distant
a kinsman!--to his wife, to his children, what can I be? A rich old
man; the sooner he is in his grave the better. A few tears, and then
the will! But, as your nephew says, 'This life is but a school;' the
new-comer in the last form thinks the head-boy just leaving so old! And
to us, looking back, it seems but the same yesterday whether we were the
last comer or the head-boy."

"I thought," said Alban, plaintively, "that, for a short time at least,
I had done with 'painful subjects.' You revel in them! County Guy, you
have not left school yet; leave it with credit; win the best prize." And
Alban plunged at once into THE CRISIS. He grew eloquent; the Party, the
Country, the Great Measure to be intrusted to Darrell, if he would
but undertake it as a member of the Cabinet; the Peerage, the House of
Vipont, and immortal glory!--eloquent as Ulysses haranguing the son of
Peleus in Troilus and Cressida.

Darrell listened coldly; only while Alban dwelt on "the Measure,"
in which, when it was yet too unripe for practical statesmen, he had
attached his faith as a thinker, the orator's eye flashed with young
fire. A great truth is eternally clear to a great