“Satisfied as to his child’s fortunes, but heartbroken for his wife’s and his brother’s loss, the poor fellow started on an aimless tramp over the country, getting a job of work here and there, just enough to keep him from starvation; sleeping in barns and outhouses, and faring as hard as he had fared in prison, except in loss of liberty.
“One day he fell in with a company of strolling players, and he joined them, getting nothing for his services except his ‘victual and drink,’ and very little and of very poor quality of that.
“But, after all, it was the small beginning of great things in that line. At first he was only trusted with small parts; but people were pleased to say he was handsome, elegant and attractive; he soon developed dramatic talent, and was charged with the leading parts in whatever might be afoot of tragedy, comedy or opera.
“After awhile he joined a circus company, where he learned to ride and to perform wondrous feats of equestrianism. He studied to improve himself in all these arts, of singing, riding, acting.
“He belonged, in succession, to many traveling companies, and he went all over the United States, the West Indies, Bermuda, and into several of the countries of South America. It took years, but at last he reached the climax of his fame as ‘Mr. Alfred Ancillon, the World-Renowned,’ and so forth and so forth! But with all this, he never made his fortune, and never, in all his life, had a hundred dollars over and above his expenses; no, not even when he was the proprietor of the Grand Plantagenet and Montmorenci Combination, etc., etc., which had the honor of playing before the enlightened audience of Frosthill, while all the crowned heads of Europe were pining for its presence.
“It was while at Frosthill that Mr. Alfred Ancillon chanced to hear of poor Joe Wyvil’s little daughter, now grown to womanhood and married to her adopted father’s only son, and that since the death of Major Hereward, and the departure of Mr. Hereward for Washington, she had been living alone at Cloud Cliffs.
“A very natural and most eager desire seized him to behold his daughter. He went to Cloud Cliffs and introduced himself, fearing the while that she would fail to recognize his claim and would deny him.
“But as fate would have it, she had, only that day, for the first time, overhauled certain old letters and papers, which had not seen the light since the day she was born; and in them she had read the story of poor Joe’s life, and had even seen poor Joe’s photograph.
“So when he revealed himself she recognized him at once. And when he explained that he was a fugitive from injustice, and that the extradition treaty was in force, she readily took the oath of secrecy her father prescribed for her—the oath that has been the cause of so much misunderstanding, suspicion and misery.
“Among the papers that he found in the old trunk, which had escaped his daughter’s notice, was a diary kept by the old seaman, Zebedee Wyvil, in which was described, among other matters, the embarkation of Señor Don Louis Zuniga, with his wife, Donna Isabella Mendoza, and their infant son; and also the Marquis of ——, the brother of the lady, on the Falcon, homeward bound from Havana to Liverpool.