ed, and all was over!

Yes; all was, we deemed, over; but happily a decree, reversing that of
Mr. Justice Grose, had gone forth in Heaven. I was sitting at home about
an hour after the court had closed, painfully musing on the events of
the day, when the door of the apartment suddenly flew open, and in
rushed Mr. Sharpe in a state of great excitement, accompanied by
Sergeant Edwards, whom the reader will remember had called the previous
day at that gentleman's house. In a few minutes I was in possession of
the following important information, elicited by Mr. Sharpe from the
half-willing, half-reluctant sergeant, whom he had found waiting for him
at his office:--

In the first place, Captain Everett was _not_ the father of the prisoner!
The young man was the son of Mary Fitzhugh by her _first_ marriage; and
his name, consequently, was Mordaunt, not Everett. His mother had
survived her second marriage barely six months. Everett, calculating
doubtless upon the great pecuniary advantages which would be likely to
result to himself as the reputed father of the heir to a splendid English
estate, should the quarrel with Mrs. Eleanor Fitzhugh--as he nothing
doubted--be ultimately made up, had brought his deceased wife's infant
son up as his own. This was the secret of Edwards and his wife; and to
purchase their silence, Captain Everett had agreed to give the bond for
an annuity which Mr. Sharpe was to draw up. The story of the legacy was a
mere pretence. When Edwards was in Yorkshire before, Everett pacified
him for the time with a sum of money, and a promise to do more for him as
soon as his reputed son came into the property. He then hurried the
_cidevant_ sergeant back to London; and at the last interview he had
with him, gave him a note addressed to a person living in one of the
streets--I forget which--leading out of the Haymarket, together with a
five-pound note, which he was to pay the person to whom the letter was
addressed for some very rare and valuable powder, which the captain
wanted for scientific purposes, and which Edwards was to forward by coach
to Woodlands Manor-House. Edwards obeyed his instructions, and delivered
the message to the queer bushy-bearded foreigner to whom it was
addressed, who told him that, if he brought him the sum of money
mentioned in the note on the following day, he should have the article
required. He also bade him bring a well-stoppered bottle to put it in. As
the bottle was to be sent