was made trustee.  He gave bond in England and America, I believe.  In any event, the fortune was to be mine when I reached the age of twenty-one, but each year the income, nearly twenty-five thousand dollars, was to be paid to my stepfather as trustee, to be safely invested by him.  My mother’s name was not mentioned in the document, except once, to identify me as the beneficiary.  I can only add to this phase of the hateful conspiracy, that for nineteen years my stepfather received this income, and that he used it to establish his own fortune.  By investing what was supposed to be my money, he has won his own way to wealth.

“Mr. Banks decided that the operations were safest from this side of the Atlantic.  He and my mother took up their residence in New York, and it has been their home ever since.  He spent the first half year after your suspected death in London, solely for the purpose of establishing himself in Lord Brace’s favour.  Within a year after the death of Lord Brace your father was killed by a poacher on the estate.  He had but lately returned from Egypt, and was in full control of the lands and property attached to Brace Hall.  If my stepfather had designs upon Brace Hall, they failed, for the lands and the title went at once to your father’s cousin, Sir Harry Brace, the present lord.

“So much for the conditions in England then and now.  I now return to that part of the story which most interests and concerns you.  My poor mother was compelled, within a fortnight after we landed in New York, to give up the dangerous infant who was always to hang like a cloud between fortune and honour.  The maid-servant was paid well for her silence.  By the way, she died mysteriously soon after coming to America, but not before giving to my mother a signed paper setting forth clearly every detail in so far as it bore upon her connection with the hateful transaction.  Conscience was forever at work in my mother’s heart; honour was constantly struggling to the surface, only to be held back by fear of and loyalty to the man she loved.

“It was decided that the most humane way to put you out of existence was to leave you on the doorstep of some kindly disposed person, far from New York.  My stepfather and my mother deliberately set forth on this so-called mission of mercy.  They came north, and by chance, fell in with a resident of Boggs City while in the station at Albany.  They were debating which way to turn for the next step.  My mother was firm in the resolve that you should be left in the care of honest, reliable, tender-hearted people, who would not abuse the trust she was to impose.  The Boggs City man said he had been in Albany to see about a bill in the legislature, which was to provide for the erection of a monument in Tinkletown—­where a Revolutionary battle had been fought.  It was he who spoke of Anderson Crow, and it was his stories of your goodness and generosity, Mr. Crow, that caused them to select you as the man who was to have Rosalie, and, with her, the sum of one thousand dollars a year for your trouble and her needs.