“As sure, sir, as that I am talking to you at this moment,” returned the old man, confidently. “I could not see the rector, it is true, for the chapel was dark, but I knew the good old man’s voice well, and I know that, instead of the young man’s clergyman—if a clergyman he had with him at all—marrying them, the rector of St. John’s chapel said the ceremony over them himself.”
“Oh, if you could prove this to me!” Marion’s son said, an agony of longing in his concentrated tones.
The sexton shook his head with an air of perplexity.
“I cannot prove it, sir, except by my word, and I’ve never told any one before; but you, sir, being the son of the pretty young lady—I had seen her before, strolling with the gentleman—you being her child, have a right to know it.”
“The rector! the rector! where is he? If this is true, he can prove it,” his companion cried, starting up with excitement.
“Ah, sir, he has been dead these ten years, and there is a young man in his place who could not know anything about this,” the sexton replied, with a look of pity at the handsome young stranger who was so painfully agitated.
“And there were no other witnesses—you were the only one who saw and heard this?”
“Yes, sir, I was the only one as far as I know; but,” with sudden thought, “I’ve heard that the old rector never went to bed at night without first writing down everything that had happened during the day, and perhaps Miss Isabel—that’s the rector’s daughter, sir, as came with you hither, bless her kind heart!—perhaps she could tell you something more about it.”
“Thank you. What you have told me to-night is of the most vital importance, as you have doubtless judged by my unavoidable excitement. If what you say can be proved, it will repair one of the greatest wrongs ever committed upon this earth,” Marion’s son replied, very gravely.
“I feared it—I feared it at the time—may God forgive me for ever betraying my trust,” murmured the old man, brokenly.