Two years and the woman died, leaving a daughter, Augusta by name, afterward Mrs. Augusta Leigh.

Back to England went Mad Jack Byron, broken-hearted, bearing in his arms the baby girl.  Kind kinsmen, ready to forgive, cared for the child.  Mad Jack didn’t remain broken-hearted long—­what would you expect from a man?  He sought sympathy among several discreet dames, and in two years we find him safely and legally married to Catherine Gordon.  Scotch, and heiress to twenty-five thousand pounds.  On the occasion of the wedding, Jack informed a friend that the fact of the lady’s being Scotch was forgiven in view of the dowry.  Most of this fortune went into a rat-hole to help pay the debts of the Mad Jack.

One child was born to this ill-assorted pair—­a boy who was destined to write his name large on history’s page.  But such a pedigree!  No wonder the youth once wrote to Augusta, his half-sister, expressing a covetous appreciation of her parentage, even with its bar sinister.  In passing, it is well to note the sunshine of this love of brother and sister, which continued during life—­confidential, earnest, tender, frank.  In their best moods they were both lofty souls, and their mutuality was cemented in a contempt for the man who was their sire.  This fine brotherly and sisterly affection comes close to us when we remember that it was our own Harriet Beecher Stowe, with sympathies worn to the quick through much brooding over the wrongs of a race in bondage, who rushed into print with a scandalous accusation concerning this same sweet affection of brother for sister.  The charge was brought on no better foundation than some old-woman gossip held over the hyson when it was red, and moved itself aright—­all vouchsafed to Mrs. Stowe by the widow of Byron in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-six.  If a woman as good at heart as Harriet Beecher Stowe was deceived, why should we blame humanity for biting at a hook that is not baited?

No sane dentist will administer an anesthetic to a woman, without a witness:  not that women as a class are dangerous, but because some women can not be trusted to distinguish between their dreams and the facts.  Every practising lawyer of insight also knows that a wronged woman’s reasons are plentiful as blackberries, and must always be taken with large pinches of the Syracuse product.

Mad Jack followed his regiment here and there, dodging his creditors, and finally in Seventeen Hundred Ninety-one induced his wife to borrow a hundred pounds for him, with which he started to Paris intent on retrieving fortune with pasteboard.

He died on the way, and the money was used to bury him.  The lame boy was then three years old, but a few dark memories, no doubt retouched by hearsay, were retained by him of Mad Jack, who in his most sober moments never guessed that he would be known to the ages as the father of the greatest poet of his time.

Mad Jack was neither literary nor psychic.