ere is one person who cares about my happiness.
If I cannot prove that Jane is not my cousin, I can at least give up
the property, which never would have been left to me unless Henry
Hogarth had believed me to be his son. Jane must love me--her sister
must know it, or she would never have written to me thus. I will have
her after a time. If I can combine the public duty and the career I
have entered on with happiness, so much the better; if not, farewell
ambition! She cannot blame me for such a course. Henry Hogarth wronged
his nieces to enrich me, supposing me to be his son: he must have
supposed it, or he would not have forbidden our marriage on account of
the cousinship. If I can restore it to Jane by marriage, well and good;
but otherwise I cannot keep it. To-morrow for inquiries. First a file
of the TIMES for 18-; the police reports, the coroner's inquests, the
passenger-list of the Sydney ship and of the American ship, inquiries
at the lodging-house near the wharf--then to Edinburgh to inquire at
the house in New Street, and consult with MacFarlane and Sinclair. I
surely can work through it--at least I will try."

Chapter XII.

What Can Be Made Of It?

Early on the following morning Francis began his researches; but the
TIMES and other journals of the date Mrs. Peck mentioned, which he
searched through, proved quite barren of intelligence. The
passenger-lists he could not find complete anywhere; the newspapers
more especially devoted to these matters contained the passenger-list
of the 'Lysander' bound for Sydney, for the first and second cabin, and
in the latter the names of Mrs. Ormistown and Miss E. Ormistown were
mentioned; but for the American ship, in which he supposed his real
mother had sailed, there was no mention of any passengers except those
in the first cabin; and in all probability, she being a poor woman,
would sail in the steerage. There were also three vessels sailing for
New York very close upon one another at the time, and he could not be
sure in which the passage had been taken. Mrs. Peck said the ship was
to sail the next day; but her own vessel had been rather hurried to go
with the tide, and there was no saying whether that was the case with
the American one. But in all the American ships there was no mention of
the names of the fore-cabin passengers. Then the police reports gave no
account of any complaint having been made about an exchanged child, and
when he eagerly turned to t