I  
T was a long time before the house in Eaton Square in any way recovered its former appearance. Captain Bayley had lost much of his life and vivacity, and, as the servants remarked to each other, nothing seemed to put him out. He went for his morning ride in the Park, or his afternoon visit to the Club, as usual, but his thoughts seemed far away; he passed old friends without seeing them, and if stopped he greeted them no longer with a cheery ring in his voice, or a quick smile of welcome. Every one who knew him remarked that Bayley was going down hill terribly fast, and was becoming a perfect wreck.
Frank's name was never now mentioned in the house. Its utterance had not been forbidden, but it had been dropped as a matter concerning which a hopeless disagreement existed. Alice had changed almost as much as her uncle. Her spirits were gone; her voice was no longer heard singing about the house; she no longer ran up and down the stairs with quick springing footsteps, and indeed seemed all at once to have changed from a young girl into a young woman. Sometimes, as she sat, the tears filled her eyes and rolled fast down her[254] cheeks; at other times she would walk about with her eyebrows knitted, and hands clenched, and lips pursed together, a little volcano of suppressed anger.
 
Although no discussion on the subject had taken place between her and her guardian, it was an understood thing that she maintained her opinion, and that she regarded Fred Barkley as an enemy. If she happened to be in the room when he was announced, she would rise and leave it without a word; if he remained to a meal, she would not make her appearance in the dining or drawing rooms.
 
"Alice still regards me as the incarnation of evil," Fred said, with a forced laugh, upon one of those occasions.
 
"The child is a trump," Captain Bayley said warmly, "a warm lover and a good hater. What a thing it is," he said, with a sigh, "to be at an age when trust and confidence are unshakable, and when nothing will persuade you that what you wish to believe is not right; what would I not give for that child's power of trust?"
 
The household in Eaton Square were almost unanimous in Frank's favour. His genial, hearty manners rendered him a universal favourite with the servants; and although none knew the causes of Frank's sudden disappearance, the general opinion was that, whatever had happened, he could not have been to blame in the matter.
 
His warmest adherent was Evan Holl, who had months before been introduced to the house as assistant knife and boot cleaner by Frank. He did not sleep there, going home at nine o'clock in the evening when his work was done.
 
"Do you know, Harry," he said, one day, "what a rum crest, as they calls it,—I asked the butler what it meant, and he says as how it was the crest of the family—Captain[255] Bayley has; he's got it on his silver, and I noticed it when I was in the pantry to-day helping the butler to clean some silver dishes which had been lying by unused for some time. 'All families of distinction,' the butler said,—he is mighty fond of using hard long words—'all families of distinction,' says he, ''as got their own crest, which belongs to them and no one else. Now this 'ere crest of the guv'nor's is a hand holding a dagger, and the hand has only got three fingers.' I said as how there was two missing, and that the chap as did it couldn't have known much of his business to go and leave out two fingers. But the butler says, 'That's your hignorance,' says he; 'the hand 'as got only three fingers because a hancestor of the Captain's in the time of the Crusaders'—— 'And what's the Crusaders?' says I. 'The Crusaders was a war between the English and the Americans hundreds of years ago,' says he."
 
Harry burst into a shout of laughter. "Mr. Butler does not know anything about it, for the Crusades were wars between people who went out to the Holy Land to recover the Holy Sepulchre from the Turks who held it."
 
"Ah, well," Evan said, "it don't make no odds whether they was Turks or Americans. However, the butler says as how the Captain Bayley what lived in those days, he saw a red Injun a-crawling to stab the king, who was a-lying asleep in his tent, and just as his hand was up to stick in the knife, Captain Bayley he gives a cut with his sword which whips off two of the fingers, and before the Injun could turn round and go at him he gives another cut, and takes off his hand at the wrist, and the next cut he takes off his head; so the hand with three fingers holding a dagger was given him to carry as a crest. I suppose[256] after a time the hand got wore out, or got bad, so as he couldn't have carried it about no longer, and instead of that, as a kind of remembrance of the affair, he 'as them put on his forks and spoons."
 
Mrs. Holl had been listening with grave interest to the narrative.
 
"Does I understand you to say, Evan, that no other family but that of the master's put this three-fingered hand with a knife on to their things?"
 
"That's so, mother; leastways it's what the butler says about it."
 
"Then if that's the case," Mrs. Holl said thoughtfully, "any one who has got this crest, as you calls it, on his things must be a relation of the Captain."
 
"I suppose so, mother; he might be a long distance off, you know, because this ere affair took place hundreds of years ago, and there may be a lot of the same family about in different parts."
 
"So there might," Mrs. Holl said, in a disappointed voice.
 
"Why, mother," Harry said, "one would think it made some difference to you, you speak so mournfully about it."
 
"It don't make no difference to me, Harry," Mrs. Holl said, "but it makes a lot of difference to you. You know I told you two or three months ago how you come to be here. I don't know as I told you that round the neck of your mother, when she died in that room, was a bit of silk ribbon, and on it was a little seal of gold, with a red stone in it, which I put by very careful for you, though what good such a thing would do to you, or anybody else, I didn't see. Well, on that red stone there was something cut; and father he took it to a chap as understands about[257] those things, who got some red wax, and hotted it, and dropped some of it on a paper, and then squeezed this 'ere stone down on it, and looks at the mark through a eye-glass, and he tells father that it was a hand with three fingers holding a dagger."
 
"That was curious, mother," Harry said, "very curious. Can you fetch me the seal and let me have a look at it? I don't remember ever having seen it."
 
The seal was fetched by Mrs. Holl from a pill-box, in which it was carefully stored away in the corner of a drawer. Harry examined it closely.
 
"It looks like a hand holding a dagger," he said, "but it's too small for me to see whether it has three fingers or four. Evan, will you run round with it to the little watchmaker's in the next street, and ask him to look at it with one of the glasses he sticks in his eye when he is at work, and to tell you whether it has three fingers or four."
 
Evan returned in a few minutes with the news that the watchmaker at once said that the hand had but three fingers.
 
"Well, from that, Harry," Mrs. Holl said, "if what this man have been and told Evan is right, you must be some relation to Captain Bayley."
 
"A cousin, fifty times removed, perhaps," Harry laughed, "but at any rate, it is pleasant to be able to think that I come of a good family."
 
"You knew that before, Harry," Mrs. Holl said severely, "for I told you over and over again that your mother was a lady, though she was in bad circumstances, and I think, after charring in respectable houses for the last twenty years, I ought to know a lady when I[258] sees one. Well, there's nothing as you think I could do about it?"
 
"I should think not," Harry laughed. "How the old gent would stare if Evan was to walk up to him and say, 'Captain Bayley, I have got a foster-brother at home who, I think, is a relation of yours.' That would be a nice piece of cheek, wouldn't it?"
 
Evan laughed.
 
"However, mother, I votes as in future we calls Harry Harry Bayley instead of Harry Holl."
 
"You won't do anything of the sort, Evan," the cripple lad answered hotly. "Holl's my name, and you don't suppose I am going to drop the name of the father and mother who brought me up, and have tended me all these years, for Bayley or any other name; besides, even if it should turn out that I am remotely connected with the family, there is no reason why my name should be Bayley, for, of course, if my mother had been a Bayley, she would have changed her name when she married."
 
Harry thought but little more of the matter, but Mrs. Holl turned it over frequently in her mind, and discussed it with John. John said, "He didn't think much would come of it; still, he didn't see as how there could be any harm in asking, seeing that she had set her mind on it."
 
So Mrs. Holl resolved to move in the matter. Evan, on being appealed to, said that he did not see how she was to get to speak with Captain Bayley; the footman wouldn't be likely to show her in to his master unless she stated her business. But after much pressing, and declaring over and over again he wished he had never said a word about the hand with three fingers, Evan consented, if he found an opportunity, to ask Captain Bayley[259] to see his mother. This opportunity, however, did not arrive, Evan's duties never bringing him in contact with his employer. At last Mrs. Holl became desperate, and one morning, after breakfast, she went to Captain Bayley's house. The ring at the area-bell brought out the cook.
 
"What is it?" she said sharply.
 
"I am the mother, ma'am, of Evan, as works here."
 
"Well, come down, if you want to see him."
 
"I don't want to see him, I want to see Captain Bayley."
 
"I will tell the footman," the cook said, "but I don't think it likely as you can see the Captain."
 
The footman soon made his appearance. Fortunately he was very young, and had not yet acquired that haughtiness of manner which characterises his class. Evan had before told him that his mother wanted to see Captain Bayley, and had begged him to do his best, should she come, to facilitate her doing so.
 
"Good morning," he said. "Your boy told me you would be likely enough coming. So you want to see the Captain; he has just finished his breakfast and gone into the study. Now, what shall I say you wants to see him for? I can't show you in, you know, without asking him first."
 
The young footman was, indeed, curious to know what Mrs. Holl's object could be in wishing to see his master. Evan had resisted all his attempts to find out, simply saying that it was a private affair of his mother's.
 
"Will you say to him," Mrs. Holl said, "that the mother of the boy as works here under you is most anxious for to see him just for two or three minutes; that it ain't nothing to do with the boy, but she wishes particular to[260] ask Captain Bayley a question—if he will be so good as to see her—that no one else but hisself could answer."
 
"It's a rum sort of message," the young footman said, "but, anyhow, I will give it; the Captain ain't as hot-tempered as he used to be, and he can but say he won't see you."
 
Captain Bayley looked mystified when the footman delivered Mrs. Holl's message to him; then he remembered that it was Frank who had introduced her son to help in the house, and he wondered whether her errand could have any connection with him.
 
"Well, show her up, James," he said; "but just tell her that my time is precious, and that I don't want to listen to long rambling stories, so whatever she has got to say, let her say it straight out."
 
"It's all right," James s............