"In good truth, my dear young friend, he is right," said Mr. Hargrave, who had been looking carefully over the papers. "Here is every proof that you passed as Henry Hayley; every proof that Milford was privately married and had a son; every proof that he believed you to be that son, and that Hayley told him so; but no legal proof whatever that the boy who was given to the care of the nurse by your poor father was the same that Mr. Hayley brought home and acknowledged as his own."
"I've got it here, sir," said the pedlar, producing an old pocket-book. "I told the young lord that he'd want more of my help; so, between the time when I last saw him and the day I went to listen at Lady Fleetwood's, I ran down to the part of the country where they were married; for I recollected quite well having seen a pretty babby, about that time, at Mrs. Goldie's, the grocer's widow's, with black ribbons upon its little white frock; and I knew it was a nurse-child, for she had none of her own--never had. She's alive to this day; and there is her certificate that the child she delivered to Stephen Hayley, Esq. was the child of Charles Mellent and Mary Graves. She has got, moreover, the order, in Charles Mellent's own hand, to deliver the child to Mr. Hayley, and Mr. Hayley's acknowledgment that he had received it. She says, too, that with the child she gave him a gold box, the top of which unscrews, and in it she put a paper, like a careful old body as she is, with all the marks the child had upon it, such as moles and spots, and such like, which most of us have more or less."
"I've got the box!" cried Mr. Winkworth, alias Marston, who had broken off a conversation with his son to listen: "I owe that to the care of my little man Jim. It was found in the goods and chattels of poor Miss Hayley; but there is amongst her papers a memorandum, written in one of her saner moods, stating that the box was brought with the clothes of her brother's son, Henry Hayley, when he first came home from the place where he was nursed, and that she always preserved it carefully, in the hope that she might some time hear news of the poor child's mother, who must have been of some rank, as there is a coronet engraved upon the box."
"Bravo! bravo!" said Mr. Hargrave: "the only link wanting in the chain seems to be supplied; and now I think we shall do, without any further question."
And so think I, dear reader, too.
FOOTNOTES
[Footnote 1]: It may be as well to state, that this story of Carlo Carlini was told to the author, word for word, as it is here written down, by Carlo Carlini himself, then the author's servant. I cannot forbear adding, that a more faithful, honest, intelligent man never lived; and that, after having left my service, on my return to England, he entered that of my friend, the late Mr. Scott, Consul-General at Bordeaux, where he gained the esteem of all, and died, I believe, in the arms of his young master, the present Mr. Scott.