e house. Among the folds of the shawl there was discovered
an open letter, without date, signature, or address, which it was
presumed the woman must have forgotten.

Like the shawl, the paper was of foreign manufacture. The handwriting
presented a strongly marked character; and the composition plainly
revealed the mistakes of a person imperfectly acquainted with the
English language. The contents of the letter, after alluding to the
means supplied for the support of the child, announced that the writer
had committed the folly of inclosing a sum of a hundred pounds in a
banknote, "to pay expenses." In a postscript, an appointment was made
for a meeting in six months' time, on the eastward side of London
Bridge. The stable-boy's description of the woman who had passed him
showed that she belonged to the lower class. To such a person a hundred
pounds would be a fortune. She had, no doubt, abandoned the child, and
made off with the money.

No trace of her was ever discovered. On the day of the appointment the
police watched the eastward side of London Bridge without obtaining any
result. Through the kindness of the gentleman in whose stable he had
been found, the first ten years of the boy's life were passed under the
protection of a charitable asylum. They gave him the name of one of the
little inmates who had died; and they sent him out to service before he
was eleven years old. He was harshly treated and ran away; wandered to
some training-stables near Newmarket; attracted the favorable notice
of the head-groom, was employed among the other boys, and liked the
occupation. Growing up to manhood, he had taken service in private
families as a groom. This was the story of twenty-six years of Michael's
life.

But there was something in the man himself which attracted attention,
and made one think of him in his absence.

I mean by this, that there was a spirit of resistance to his destiny in
him, which is very rarely found in serving-men of his order. I remember
accompanying the General "on one of his periodical visits of inspection
to the stable." He was so well satisfied that he proposed extending his
investigations to the groom's own room.

"If you don object, Michael?" he added, with his customary consideration
for the self-respect of all persons in his employment. Michael's color
rose a little; he looked at me. "I am afraid the young lady will not
find my room quite so tidy as it ought to be," he said as he opened th