It was a gracious thing in God to permit me to owe the great happiness of this discovery to the little crippled child he had cast upon my care so mysteriously, and I failed not to render to him with other grateful acknowledgments “most humble and hearty thanks” for this crowning grace.  Henceforth Hope should lend her torch to light my dearth—­her wings to bear me up—­her anchor wherewith to moor my hark of life wherever cast, and to the poor waif I cherished I owed this immeasurable good.  Had Mrs. Clayton anticipated him with her infallible besom—­that housewifely detective, that drags more secrets to light than ever did paid policeman—­I should never have grasped this talisman of love and hope, never have waked up as I did wake up from that hour to the endurance which immortalizes endeavor, and renders patience almost pleasurable.

On the back of this well-worn letter was a pencil-scrawl, which, although I read it last, I present first to my reader, that he may trace link by link the chain of villainy that bound together my two oppressors.

It was in the small, clear calligraphy of Basil Bainrothe, before described; characterized, I believe, as a back-hand—­and thus it ran: 

“You are right—­it was a master-stroke!  Keep them in ignorance of each other, and all will yet go well.  I sail to-morrow, and have only time to inclose this with a pencilled line.  Try and head them at New York.  My first idea was the best—­my reason I will explain later.

“Yours truly, B.B.

“N.B.—­The man could not have played into our hands better than by taking up such an impression.  There is no one there to undeceive him.”

THE LETTER.

“My Miriam:  Your note, through the hands of Mr. Gregory, has been received—­read, noted, pondered over with pain and amazement.  The avowal of your name so uselessly withheld from me, lets in a whole flood of light, blinding and dazzling, too, on a subject that fills me with infinite solicitude.

“There have been strange reserves between us that never ought to have existed, on my part as well as yours.  I should have told you that I once had a half-sister, called Constance Glen—­older than myself by many years—­who married during my long absence from our native land a gentleman much older than herself, an Englishman by the name of Monfort, and, after giving birth to a daughter, died suddenly.  These particulars I gathered from strangers, but there were many wanting which you can best supply.  I know that this gentleman had a daughter, or daughters, by an earlier marriage—­and I can find no clew to the date of my sister’s marriage—­which might in itself determine the possible age of her own daughter.  That this child survived I have painful cause to remember.  I had sustained shipwreck, and was in abeyance for clothes and money both, when it occurred to me to call on my brother-in-law, present to him my credentials, and remain a few days at his