“Just to bring to yer recollection the very circumstance ye hae mentioned, Mr Riddel,” replied the gipsy. “Noo, sir,” she went on, “tak a look o’ that lad, [pointing to Gordon,] an’ tell me if ye wad ken him to be yer ain son. And you, Gordon,” she said, “look at that gentleman, an’ see if ye wad tak him to be yer faither; for, as God’s in heaven,” she continued, “that’s the relationship in which ye twa staun to are anither!”
“Woman! what do you mean?” exclaimed Mr. Riddel in an angry tone. “Are you deranged? What absurd nonsense is this you talk? I never had any son but the child that was drowned.”
“I didna say ye had, Mr. Riddel,” replied Jean; “but that’s yer son, nevertheless. This I swear, by a’ my hopes o’ a hereafter!”
“Gracious God!—explain, woman! explain!” exclaimed Mr. Riddel, now greatly agitated—a glimmering of the possibility of what had actually occurred suddenly bursting on his mind. “Tell me, I beseech you, what you mean at once, and without further evasion.”
Thus entreated, Jean Gordon proceeded to detail the whole of the circumstances connected with the saving of the child (whom, we presume, we need not inform the reader in more explicit terms, was, indeed, the son of the person to whose paternity Jean ascribed him) from the Hawick flood.
When she had concluded—
“Extraordinary! most extraordinary!” exclaimed Mr. Riddel, now overwhelmed with a variety of new and strange feelings. “Can it be possible? O God! thy ways are inscrutable. But what proof have I of the truth of your story, Jean?” said the agitated father, gazing on his son.
“Proof!” exclaimed the gipsy; “look at the lad, Mr. Riddel—look at him, closely; an’ if ye dinna find proof enough in that face, ye’ll be hard to convince. Is he no your very counterpart?”
This part of Jean’s evidence was, indeed, of the most irrefragable kind; for the resemblance was remarkably striking.
“An’ if that’ll no satisfy ye,” she went on, “is there no half-a-dozen an’ mair o’ oor folk, that saw the hail affair, an’ that’ll swear to the truth o’ a’ that I’ve said?—an’ ye may tak them up, ane by ane, this minute, if ye like, an’ examine them a’ separately on the subject; an’ if ye find ane o’ them contradick me in the sma’est particular, dinna believe ae word o’ what I hae said. An’, if that’ll no convince ye yet, Mr Riddell,” she continued, “ye shall hae mair proof still. Come here, Gordon,” she said, addressing the young man, who, in silent amazement, was listening to this extraordinary denouement—“sit down.” He obeyed; and she pulled off the shoe and stocking from his left leg. Then holding up the lad’s naked foot, “Do ye ken thae twa taes, then, Mr Riddell?” she inquired, pointing, at the same time, to the little toe and the one adjoining to which the former was united.