"Very likely, for these facts and falsehoods were the common property of the neighborhood. But what you have not heard before, and what is not known to any now living, except the criminals, the victims and myself, is that, three months after the death of her husband, Madame Eugene Le Noir gave birth to twins—one living, one dead. The dead child was privately buried; the living one, together with the nurse that was the sole witness of the birth, was abducted."
"Great heavens! can this be true?" exclaimed the minister, shocked beyond all power of self-control.
"True as gospel! I have proof enough to carry conviction to any honest breast—to satisfy any caviller—except a court of justice. You shall hear. You remember the dying woman whom you dragged me out in the snow-storm to see—blame you!"
"Yes."
"She was the abducted nurse, escaped and returned. It was to make a deposition to the facts I am about to relate that she sent you to fetch me," said Old Hurricane; and with that he commenced and related the whole dark history of crime comprised in the nurse's dying deposition. They examined the instrument together, and Old Hurricane again related, in brief, the incidents of his hurried journey to New York; his meeting and identifying Capitola and bringing her home in safety to his house.
"And thus," said the old man, "you perceive that this child whose birth was feloniously concealed, and who was cast away to perish among the wretched beggars, thieves and street-walkers of New York, is really the only living child of the late Eugene Le Noir, and the sole inheritrix of the Hidden House, with its vast acres of fields, forests, iron and coal mines, water power, steam mills, furnaces and foundries—wealth that I would not undertake to estimate within a million of dollars—all of which is now held and enjoyed by that usurping villain, Gabriel Le Noir!"
"But," said the minister, gravely, "you have, of course, commenced proceedings on the part of your protégé."
"Listen; I will tell you what I have done. When I first brought Cap home I was moved not only by the desire of wreaking vengeance upon a most atrocious miscreant who had done me an irreparable injury, but also by sympathy for the little witch who had won my heart at first sight. Therefore, you may judge I lost no time in preparing to strike a double blow which should ruin my own mortal enemy and reinstate my favorite in her rights. With this view, immediately on my return home, I sent for Breefe, my confidential attorney, and laid the whole matter before him."
"And he——"
"To my dismay he told me that, though the case was clear enough, it was not sufficiently strong, in a legal point of view, to justify us in bringing suit; for that the dying deposition of the mulatto nurse could not be received as evidence in our county courts."