"Oh, I hope we will get to see it!" exclaimed Lulu eagerly.
"As far as I'm concerned, I'm bound to manage it somehow," said Betty.
"How much I should like to know what was really the true story of that poor unfortunate child," said Elsie, reflectively, and sighing as she spoke.
"It—like the story of the Man in the Iron Mask—is a mystery that will never be satisfactorily cleared up until the Judgment Day," remarked her father.
"Oh, do tell us about it," the children cried in eager chorus.
"All of you older ones have certainly some knowledge of the French Revolution, in which Louis XVI. and his beautiful queen lost their lives?" Mr. Dinsmore said, glancing about upon his grandchildren; "and have not forgotten that two children survived them—one sometimes called Louis XVII., as his father's lawful successor to the throne, and a daughter older than the boy.
"These children remained in the hands of their cruel foes for some time after the beheading of their royal parents. The girl was finally restored to her mother's relatives, the royal family of Austria; but the boy, who was most inhumanly treated by his jailer, was supposed to have died in consequence of that brutal abuse, having first been reduced by it to a state of extreme bodily and mental weakness.
"That story (of the death of the poor little dauphin, I mean, not of the cruel treatment to which he was subjected) has, however, been contradicted by another; and I suppose it will never be made certain in this world which was the true account.
"The dauphin was born in 1785, his parents were beheaded in 1793; so that he must have been about eight years old at the time of their death.
"In 1795 a French man and woman, directly from France, appeared in Albany, New York, having in charge a girl and boy; the latter about nine years old, and feeble in body and mind.