d. You have
before you only a poor mountebank--"

"I have before me," said the sheriff, "Lord Fermain Clancharlie, Baron
Clancharlie and Hunkerville, and a peer of England!"

Then the sheriff, rising, offered his seat with a bow to Gwynplaine,
saying, "My lord, will you please to be seated?"

_III.--The House of Lords_

Before he left the prison the sheriff explained to Gwynplaine how it was
he was Lord Clancharlie.

The bottle containing the documents which had been thrown into the sea
in January 1690 had at last come to shore, and had been duly received at
the Admiralty by a high official named Barkilphedro.

This document declared that the child abandoned by those on the sinking
vessel was the only child of Lord Fermain Clancharlie, deceased. At the
age of two it had been sold, disfigured, and put out of the way by order
of King James II. Its parents were dead, and a man named Hardquanonne,
now in prison at Chatham, had performed the mutilation, and would
recognise the child, who was called Gwynplaine. Being about to die, the
signatories to the document confessed their guilt in abducting the
child, and could not, in the face of death, refrain from acknowledgment
of their crime.

The prisoner Hardquanonne had been found at Chatham, and he had
recognised Gwynplaine. Hardquanonne died of the tortures he had
suffered, but just before his death he said, "I swore to keep the
secret, and I have kept it as long as I could. We did it between us--the
king and I. Silence is no longer any good. This is the man."

What was the reason for the hatred of James II. to the child?

This. Lord Clancharlie had taken the side of Cromwell against Charles
I., and had gone into exile in Switzerland rather than acknowledge
Charles II. as king. On the death of this nobleman James II. had
declared his estates forfeit, and the title extinct, believing that the
heir was lost beyond possible recovery. On David Dirry-Moir, an
illegitimate son of Lord Clancharlie, were the peerage and estates
conferred, on condition that he married a certain Duchess Josiana, an
illegitimate daughter of James II.

How was it Gwynplaine was restored to his inheritance?

Anne was Queen of England when the bottle was taken to the Admiralty in
1705, and shared with the high official whose business it was to attend
to all flotsam and jetsam, a cordial dislike of Duchess Josiana. It
seemed to the Queen an excellent thing that Josiana should have to marry