Chelmsford nudged the other two, with a "Hist! Blast your eyes, that's her now. She is a sleep walker. Chivers told me about this, and, when I said there was no such thing, but that it was all a hoax, he mentioned that he had a little girl with him who would rise from a sound slumber, walk about in moonlight, and see in the dark as plain as a young owl. Keep still and she is ours." With another muttered imprecation on his companions for their cowardice, he forced on each a copious draught from the brandy flask in his pocket. Five minutes later and, with feet and hands carefully pinioned, and a tight bandage over the mouth to prevent a sound from escaping her lips, the somnambulist was the captive of the guilty three.

In the morning Charity was missing and all search in vain. The arrangements of her kidnappers were made with the precision which characterizes adepts in crime. The circumstance excited but small remark, the gossips shaking their wise heads sagaciously and remarking to each other that she was a half breed Indian, who had quietly slipped away to her wild life. The gentle Quakeress found nothing removed from the apartment but a loose, white morning gown, even the light slippers remaining as they had been placed upon retiring for the night.

Within twenty-four hours an Englishman, by name Philip Bulwinkle, arrived at Proutville. Robbed upon the Isthmus of Panama and left there penniless, he had earned, by day-labor, a trifling sum of money; had secured a passage in a steamer to Havana; thence after recovering from a fever had arrived at a northern port; passed weeks in searching from place to place along the bays and inlets of Long Island, for a family named Buncle; learned that a girl placed under their charge by Chivers had left them; found at last the drunken son of Neeshema; was informed by him that his deceased mother had accompanied the heiress to a village on the mainland, and now arrived a day too late.

CHAPTER XXVI.

COUNTER-PLOT.

For six years the executors of the will of the Earl of Riverside had made every possible exertion to unravel the dark mystery of Rosa's fate. Chivers had so carefully guarded his secret that the detectives heretofore employed had been baffled to this point. Three experienced agents of the London Police were now sent abroad with instructions to spare no pains or expense for the recovery of the heiress.

The evidence adduced by Dr. Bushwig in proof of the identity of Rosa Devereux with the gipsy child whose death had taken place at Coddlington Green, submitted to counsel, had drawn forth the opinion that, unless some positive testimony could be brought forth, fixing a conspiracy on the Rector of Richmanstown and identifying the child abducted by Chivers from the care of Marian Deschamps with the heiress of the estate, the decision must be in favor of their opponent.

To obtain delay was now their object, still entertaining the faint hope that the orphan might yet be recovered. Acting in pursuance of the instructions of the will, they determined to avail themselves of such legal methods as were possible for the purpose of postponing the decision. At the June Assizes, when the suit was called, their counsel moved for a postponement of the case on the plea that witnesses of great importance were absent in America. Baron Grumble, the judge, over-ruling the motion, the trial pro

ceeded. The magnitude of the case, and the interests involved, filled Richmanstown with a concourse of strangers, and, when the court was opened, a dense array of the beauty, fashion and distinction of the county thronged the place.

Sergeant Wildfire opened for his client, Dr. Bushwig. "It was a case of extraordinary simplicity. There were two parties, the heir in entail, who sought, by an appeal to law, to obtain possession of his family estate, and the executors of the late Earl, who, for some reason to him unknown, and acting in a most unwarrantable manner, had thrown every obstacle in the way. They were now here to obtain such a decision as would vindicate justice and teach those who had thus warred against its plain course such a lesson as might not be lost. His only regret was that two divines of the Establishment were arrayed in opposition to each other. One of them, his Honorable and Reverend client, was speedily, as was hinted, to be exalted to a bishopric. The other was an honest, well-meaning but obstinate country parson. He rejoiced to say that, throughout the whole course of this lamentable affair, Dr. Bushwig, for whom he appeared, had treated his enemies with Christian charity, but forbearance had its limit, and now mercy must give way to justice." Then in a masterly manner he brought forward his testimony, proving first that Dr. Bushwig was the legal heir in entail in default of Rosa Devereux, daughter of Robert Devereux, deceased. It now became necessary to establish the identity of Rosa Devereux with the child buried at Coddlington Green. The certificates already procured for the occasion, by Dr. Bumblefuz, were now adduced in evidence, and the confession of Chivers brought forth as corroborative testimony. The case rested here.

The counsel for the defence were unable to adduce any direct, admissable testimony to establish either that the confession of the gipsy was a fraud or that the heiress was

still in existence, the documents for which the Forester had risked and lost his life not being deemed by the astute and experienced barristers for the trustees either safe or sufficient. Holding that a conspiracy had been entered into for the abduction of the child, between the Rector and the accused criminal, and that the finding of the bond and the package of letters was strong presumptive evidence against him, it was deemed expedient to suppress all this at present, and to act as if utterly unable to offset the declaration in the plaintiff's behalf. Accordingly an exception was taken to the decision of the court, overruling the motion for delay; judgment being entered on the docket in favor of the plaintiff, who, flushed with victory, received the congratulations of his numerous friends. This triumph was fruitless of results for the present, as the executors retained possession, the case having to be re-argued in future on the appeal. It was hoped that by this course a year's delay might be obtained.

In the meanwhile, the detectives employed by the executors made little progress in their search, though furnished with such scraps of information as were selected from the letters sent home by the Forester. Baffled at the spot where the girl, spirited away by Chivers, had been placed in retirement, they could only ascertain, that, having absconded from this place of refuge, a female of the same age, and supposed to be the runaway, had been found drowned, shortly afterward, in a neighboring pond. All traces beyond this disappeared. Not the slightest indication could be found of her reäppearance in any of the haunts which Chivers had frequented, in the metropolis, not far distant.

It is truly said that water leaves no trail. Charity, on leaving the farm house of the Buncles, had fallen in with Neeshema, and crossed with her to the main shore, without passing through any of the hamlets on the Island.

Seclu

ded now in a New England village she was beyond the reach of their keen perceptions.

The detectives returned home, giving up the search as ineffectual. In the meanwhile the New World was enriched by the accession of two personages, both of whom we observed years ago on an English common in a gipsy tent, one rejoicing in the ease which follows the setting of a broken limb, and the other, a tall, dark-skinned, ebonhaired woman, holding jubilee over his unexpected relief. The youth is the same reckless desperado that he was on the eve, when, repaying kindness with ingratitude, he unlocked the postern gate for the house-breakers at Wingate Hall. Clinging still to her son with the animal's blind fondness for its progeny, she has accompanied him to America, where he finds a precarious subsistence through his profession of a burglar, the dame in the meantime eking out a livelihood by fortune telling.

Peter Styles arrived at Proutville a day too late. Unlike the detectives, acting on one of Roger Benbow's sage maxims, he had ploughed with the heifer. A kind deed brought, as it often does, an unexpected recompense. The ill-natured, fretful woman in whose house Charity Green had once been domesticated, sat at the door smoking, in fisherman's style, and nursing an ailing child. The Bonesetter, extracted, with his old skill, a rusted fish-hook, the barb of which had become imbedded in the foot, threatening to produce lock-jaw, and then quieted the little fellow in a fatherly, old-fashioned way, having in it no motive but to relieve the suffering. Then, as he was about to leave the woman, she muttered, "If I had thought that her board would have been paid, I might have kept the girl. She must be of account. Some time ago we had three men here looking after her. They were about the neighborhood for a week. Then came a tall, thin chap, with keen eyes and a slouching gait, and, with him, a stout fellow, saying