a southeaster. The third day he hove the Sally to; being
a stout craft and not overladen she weathered the gale with the loss of
a jib, and was about making topsails again when a full-rigged ship was
descried in the offing giving signals of distress. Night was coming on
very fast, and the sea was yet running too high for a boat to live, but
the gallant captain furled his topsails once more to await the morning.
It could be seen from her signals that the ship was living throughout
the night, but at dawn she foundered before the Sally's boats could be
put in the water; one of them was ground to pieces on the falls. Out of
the ship's company and passengers they picked up but five souls, four
sailors and a little girl of two years or thereabouts. The men knew
nothing more of her than that she had come aboard at Brest with
her mother, a quiet, delicate lady who spoke little with the other
passengers. The ship was 'La Favourite du Roy', bound for the French
Indies.

Captain Stanwix's wife, who was a good, motherly person, took charge
of the little orphan, and arriving at Carvel Hall delivered her to my
grandfather, who brought her up as his own daughter. You may be sure the
emblem of Catholicism found upon her was destroyed, and she was baptized
straightway by Doctor Hilliard, my grandfather's chaplain, into the
Established Church. Her clothes were of the finest quality, and her
little handkerchief had worked into the corner of it a coronet, with the
initials "E de T" beside it. Around her neck was that locket with the
gold chain which I have so often shown you, on one side of which is the
miniature of the young officer in his most Christian Majesty's uniform,
and on the other a yellow-faded slip of paper with these words: "Elle
est la mienne, quoiqu'elle ne porte pas mou nom." "She is mine, although
she does not bear my name."

My grandfather wrote to the owners of 'La Favourite du Roy', and
likewise directed his English agent to spare nothing in the search for
some clew to the child's identity. All that he found was that the mother
had been entered on the passenger-list as Madame la Farge, of Paris, and
was bound for Martinico. Of the father there was no trace whatever.
The name "la Farge" the agent, Mr. Dix, knew almost to a certainty was
assumed, and the coronet on the handkerchief implied that the child was
of noble parentage. The meaning conveyed by the paper in the locket,
which was plainly a clipping from a letter,