"I have no other. I am here to speak the truth."
"Say what you have to say."
"I must trespass upon your patience, but I will be as brief as it is possible for me to be. It is very many years ago--I cannot recall how many; the age of the child, if it can be ascertained, will verify that--that a little girl was strangely and mysteriously brought into my neighbourhood by a man whom I never saw, and who remained in Rosemary Lane for probably not longer than a couple of hours. This stranger took a room in the house of acquaintances of mine----"
"Write on the paper, beneath your own name, the name of these acquaintances."
Seth Dumbrick wrote the name of Chester, which Mr. Temple did not glance at. He was more engaged in observing the manner in which the man before him submitted to the tests he demanded. Seth continued:
"The stranger took a room that was to let in the house, and paid, I believe, two weeks' rent in advance. The night that he took the room he disappeared from the neighbourhood, and was never more seen in it."
"Leaving the child?"
"Leaving the child. Not long after the occurrence the persons who occupied the house fell into misfortune, and the woman into whose care the child had been strangely thrown was compelled by circumstances to give up her house, and take a situation in the country."
"All this bears upon your errand to me?"
"Every word of it. The woman had a little girl of her own, a few years older than the foundling, who contracted an absorbing love for the deserted stranger. It is not necessary to relate how I, upon the breaking up of the woman's home, took upon myself the care of her child and the child whom the villain--that is the correct word, in my opinion--deserted. These children have lived with me ever since, and under my care have grown to womanhood."