Stranica 256 [256]
OCR
194 I will not tell you that he was snared away before I knew his history ‘a 6 Why not?” asked Monks, hastily. § Because you know it well.” 1”? 6 Denial to me is vain,” replied Mr. Brownlow. “I shall show you that I know more than that.” “ You — you — can’t prove anything against me,” stammered Monks. “I defy you to do it.” 6 We shall see,” returned the old gentleman, with a searching glance. “TI lost the boy, and no efforts of mine could recover him. Your mother being dead, I knew that you alone could solve the mystery, if anybody could, and as when I had estate in the West Indies—whither, as you well know, you retired upon your mother’s death, to escape the consequences of vicious courses here,—I made the voyage. fore, and were supposed to be in London, but no one could tell where. I returned. Your agents had no clue to your residence. You came and went, they said, as strangely as you had ever done; sometimes for days together, and sometimes not for months, keeping, to all appearance, the same low haunts, and mingling with the same infamous herd who had been your associates when a fierce ungovernable boy. I wearied them with new applications; I paced the streets by night and day ; but, until two hours ago, all my efforts were fruitless, and I never saw you for an instant.” ** And now you do see me,”’ said Monks, rising boldly, “what then? Fraud and robbery are high-sounding words; justified, you think, by a fancied resemblance in some young imp to an idle daubof a dead man’s. Brother! you don’t even know that a child was born of this maudlin pair; you don’t even know that.” 6 [ did not,” replied Mr. Brownlow, rising too; * but within this last fortnight i have learnt it all. You have a brother; you know it and him. There was a will, which your mother destroyed, leaving the secret and the gain to you at her own death. It contained a reference to some child likely to be the result of this sad connexion, which child was born, and accidentally encountered by you, when our suspicions were first awakened by is resemblance to his father. You repaired to the place of his birth. There »xisted proofs—proofs long suppressed— of his birth and parentage. "Those proofs were destroyed by you, and now, in your ] own words to your accomplice the Jew, ‘the only proofs of the boy’s identity lie at the bottom of the river,’ and the old hag that received them from the mother is rotting in her coffin. Unworthy son, coward, liar— you, who hold your councils with thieves and murderers in dark rooms at night—you, whose plots and wiles have hurled a violent death upon the head of ene worth millions such as you—you, who from your cradle were gall and bitterness to your own father’s heart, and in whom all evil passions vie, and profligacy festered, till they found a vent in a hideous disease which has made your face an index even to your mind— you, Edward Leeford, do you brave me still!" s No, no, no,? returned the coward, overwhelmed by these accumulated charges. “ Every word,” cried the old gentleman, § every word that has passed between you and this detested villain, is known to me. Shadows on the wall have caught your whispers, and brought them to my ear; the sight of the persecuted child has turned vice itself, and given it the courage, and almost the attributes of virtue. Murder has been done, to which you were morally, if not really a party.” “No, no,” interposed Monks. “I—I —know nothing of that. I was going to inquire the truth of the story when you overtook me. I didn’t know the cause; I thought it was a common quarrel.” ‘It was the partial disclosure of vour secrets,” replied Mr. Brownlow. “ Will you disclose the whole?" 6 Yes, I will.” ‘Set your hand to a statement of truth and ‘facts, and repeat it before witnesses 2 c That I promise, too.” “Remain quietly here until such a me to such a place as I may deem most advisable, for the purpose of attesting it? “If you insist upon that, I"11 do that, also," replied Monks. c You must do more than that,” said Mr. Brownlow. “ Make restitution to an innocent and unoffending child, for such he is, although the offspring of a guilty and most miserable love. You have not forgotten the provisions of the will. Carry them into execution so far as your brother is concerned, and then go where you please, In this world, you need meet no more." While Monks was pacing up and down,
