He poured more chloroform from his bottle
upon the handkerchief which covered André's
face. The babble ceased; no symptom of
consciousness was displayed when his leg
was pricked with a pin; the handkerchief
was thrown aside, and the patient lay
motionless at last in a flushed but heavy
slumber.

"Now, Messieurs," said Lemaire briskly,
"give me your aid, if you please. We
must make the best use of our time we
can."

How four strong men pulled and tugged at
the limbs of an apparently dead body, as if
they meant to dismember it; how Lemaire
guided their efforts, working till the
perspiration streamed over his face, I need not
tell. One thing, at least, was clear to me—
that the doctor was right in excluding the
wife from such a scene. At last we heard
something like the sound of a bilboquet ball
when it drops into its cup.

"That's it!" shouted Lemaire in triumph.
"We have done it; you may let go now."

He blew into André's nostrils and mouth.
The torpid man came to his senses more
rapidly than might have been expected. On
being asked whether he had felt any pain, he
replied that he had not, but that his dreams
this time were not so pleasant as before.
Lemaire told him that his thigh bone was in
its socket again, and that they might now
lift him into bed and keep him quiet; but
that for the future he had better take
good care how he got drunk and fell into
ditches.

The doctor was then about to take his
leave, but I stepped forward and presented
myself.

"André," I said, "I will forgive you all
the injuries you have done to Catherine if
you will assist me in ascertaining who are
Catherine's real parents, and in obtaining
her rights, whatever they may be. I am
now going, with these two gensdarmes and
Dr. Lemaire, to search the floor of your
shooting-hut. Do not attempt to deceive me;
I now know all."

"My shooting-hut! There is nothing
there."

''There is," I said firmly.

"Spare me, Monsieur," he faintly gasped,
clasping his hands and holding them out
in sign of entreaty. And then, in a still
feebler voice, he added, "You do right to go
there."

André's wife, who had overheard this
scene, tottered into the room to supplicate
my forbearance. We did go, and made her
go with us. A boat carried us, armed with
a spade and pickaxe, to the hut on the islet
in the further corner of the pond. There we
soon disinterred a strong oak box, from which
the lock had been forced years ago, containing
plate, money, jewels, and documents relating
to a family of the name of Reynolds. We
made a procès verbal on the spot, and as soon
as I returned home to Catherine, I wrote an
account of the whole transaction to my
solicitor in England.

He immediately replied, inclosing in his
letter an advertisement cut out of a London
newspaper, inquiring after the next of kin of
William Henry Reynolds, who lately died in
Australia. It was stated that the deceased
had formerly lived in France, and had left a
female infant there under the charge of a
family of the name of Boisson; but in what
department, or whereabouts, was not known
at present. That any information would be
thankfully received, and liberally rewarded,
if forwarded either to the advertisers, or
to the office of Messrs. Galignani, in
Paris.

Eventually, we proved Catherine's history
to be this. She was born at the Folly, of
English parents of gentle birth, who were its
proprietors. Her mother was in feeble
health, and André's wife became wet nurse
to the child. Urgent affairs called Mr. and
Mrs. Reynolds to England for a visit, which
was intended to be temporary; and they left
the child, and various articles of property,
under the supposed faithful guardianship of
Boisson the father. But the wife sickened
and died in London; and her husband, a
weak character, left to himself, formed a
passionate attachment for a woman, who
persuaded him to go with her to Australia,
deserting his helpless infant daughter.

When the Boissons found that month after
month elapsed, and Catherine's parents
did not return, they began to believe that both
were dead, and formed the project of appropriating
the Folly and its appurtenances to
themselves, and of bringing up the infant as
a peasant's child, in ignorance of her real
birth. The house, the pond, and the little
patch of land, were the sole temptation to the
commission of the crime. Whether from
avarice, prudence, or a remaining spark of
honesty, the Boissons had not taken to their
own use any of the property we found
concealed in the shooting hut.

At the end of many years of difficulty in
Australia, during which he often had not the
means and never the courage to return to
England, Catherine's father died. When he
felt his last hour approaching, he tried to write
a letter home; his strength failed him before
he could finish more than a fraction of what
he intended to say. Imperfect as it was, it
reached his legal representatives, and afforded
the clue of which mine had availed himself.
Catherine, through the sudden death of a
paternal uncle, was the undisputed heiress to
an estate in Cumberland, of larger area, though
less profitable in rental, than mine in the
south of England was.

After the consideration of all the
circumstances, we determined to let André and his
wife remain in the Folly as long as they lived,
taking care that it should revert to Catherine
at their death. To each of their two