ts before drawing her
last breath, she said to those around her: "As one who is soon to appear
in the presence of Almighty God, to whom I must answer, I declare that
the two children were born of my body." Thus passed "beyond these
voices" a woman, who, whatever her faults, carried a brave heart through
sorrows and trials which might well have crushed the proudest spirit.

Lady Jean's death probably did more to advance her son's cause than all
her scheming and courage during life. Influential friends flocked to the
motherless boy, whose misfortunes made such an appeal to sympathy and
protection. His father succeeded to the family baronetcy and became a
man of some substance. His uncle, the Duke, took to wife, at sixty-two,
his cousin, "Peggy Douglas, of Mains," a lady of strong character who
had long vowed that "she would be Duchess of Douglas or never marry";
and in Duchess "Peggy" Archibald found his most stalwart champion, who
gave her husband no peace until the Duke, after long vacillation, and
many maudlin moods, in which he would consign the "brat" to perdition
one day and shed tears over his pathetic plight the next, was won over
to her side. To such good purpose did the Duchess use her influence
that when her husband the Duke died, in 1761, Colonel (now Sir John)
Stewart was able to write to his elder son by his first marriage:

"DEAR JACK,--I have not had time till now to acquaint you
of the Duke of Douglas's death, and that he has left your
brother Archie his whole estate."

Thus did Lady Jean triumph eight years after her scheming brain was
stilled in death.

The rest of this singular story must be told in few words, although its
history covers many years, and would require a volume to do adequate
justice to it. Within a few months of the Duke's death the curtain was
rung up on the great Douglas Case, which for seven long years was to be
the chief topic of discussion and dispute throughout Great Britain.
Archibald's title to the Douglas lands was contested by the Duke of
Hamilton and the Earl of Selkirk, the former claiming as heir-male, the
latter under settlements made by the Duke's father. Clever brains were
set to work to solve the tangle in which the birth of the mysterious
twins was involved. Emissaries were sent to France to collect evidence
on one side and the other; notably Andrew Stewart, tutor to the young
Duke of Hamilton, who seems to have been a perfect sleuth-hound of
detecti