ABSTRACT
The worthy curate, whose curiosity (as we may suppose) was wound up to the very tiptoe of expectation, hastened to return to the parlour, and the good doctor resumed his narrative. – ‘I own to you, Mr. Evans,’ said he, ‘when his lordship, in the agonies of his soul, made this confession to me, I hardly knew how to believe my ears, and sometimes thought the whole was a mere chimæra of his own brain, formed by the in uence of a strong nervous a ection: but then he was so clear and connected in all the circumstances, and expressed such a deep and contrite sense of his transgression, that I determined, both for his peace and in pursuance of what I conceived to be my own duty, to search the matter to the bottom. e rst step I took was to go to/ this Laurence Flinn, who I understood kept an inn, between sixty and seventy miles away from Ravensdale, in a remote part of the county Clare. I found this man at home; and taking him to a place where there could be no listeners, I told him I came to him through the special agency of God to enquire what he had done with the infant son of the late Lord Rivers. – It is impossible for any language to express the astonishment and confusion into which this abrupt and peremptory question threw him. – ‘Tell the truth,’ said I, ‘and the whole truth, as you shall answer at the dreadful bar of God!’ – e fellow was a Papist, and not a little burthened with superstition. – He fell on his knees, and, a er two or three crossings, begged I would not hang him. ‘What have you done with the child?’ said I: ‘have you murdered him?’ ‘No: God forbid!’ said he: ‘he may be living yet, for aught I know: – I have neither seen nor heard of him these three-/and-twenty-years.’ ‘Oh! thou agent of Satan!’ said I; ‘what hast thou done with him? – inkest thou that I am ignorant of thy vile collusion with him who calls himself Lord Ravensdale?’ – e wretch, trembling and pale as death, confessed, that seduced by the great o ers which Lord Ravensdale, then Colonel Rivers, had made him, to put the child out of the way of being troublesome, he had prevailed with his wife, who nursed it, to say it died in a t; and they actually got a ctitious infant buried as the child of Lord Rivers. In the mean time he gave the real child to one Michael Carrol, a soldier, whose wife was giving suck; and with the child he gave him twenty guineas to carry it to London to put it in the Foundling Hospital,
and he told him it was the natural child of a gentle woman who wished it to be concealed, and that it had been christened by the name of Edward. ‘ is,’ added the wretch, ‘is all I know of the/ matter, as I shall answer at the day of judgment.’ ‘A dreadful day indeed it will be to you,’ said I; ‘but where is your wife?’ ‘Dead!’ said he, ‘many years: she did not long survive the loss of the infant.’ ‘And what is become of this Michael Carrol?’ said I: ‘is he dead also?’ ‘No,’ said he, ‘I believe not: I know a few years ago he was living in Dublin, a soldier in the Old Man’s Hospital.’ ‘Well!’ said I, ‘Mr. Flinn, you have a great deal to answer for, more than all the Ravensdale estate would make you amends for: but go directly to Lord Ravensdale, who is lying under all the agonies of a guilty conscience for his share in this nefarious business; – go, and comfort him with the knowledge that there is at least a possibility that the child may be yet alive, and that he may not, as he fears, have his blood to answer for.’ I wrote a letter by him to the unhappy lord, and I did not quit his house till I saw him fairly set o upon his/ journey. – I set out myself immediately a er for Dublin, and enquired for Carrol, whom I found living, as Flinn told me, in the Royal Hospital. I immediately got a warrant for apprehending him, and he was put under the custody of two constables, and these three men are now in your kitchen!’ ‘Well,’ said Mr. Evans, ‘and what does Carrol say? What did he do with the little innocent?’ ‘Carrol acknowledges the having received the child from Flinn, with the twenty guineas, and that he and his wife, who suckled it with her own infant, did leave Ireland with the intention to put the child into the Foundling Hospital at London, as had been agreed; that they came over in the packet to Holyhead for that purpose, and sometimes walked, and sometimes got a list, as it happened: that in going through the village of St. Asaph, it chanced to be a very warm day, and they were both greatly fatigued; when resting themselves under a hedge/ which enclosed a little garden, they saw a gentleman walking two or three times disconsolately, and at last sit down in an arbour, that was at the end of it; he seemed to be a clergyman, and in some distress.’ [Here Evans seemed greatly agitated, and wept.] Doctor Burton continued: ‘Carrol and his wife thought this a good opportunity to get rid of their charge, and save all farther trouble and expence, by throwing the poor infant on the mercy of this gentleman. e woman, he says, took the infant, which was sleeping in her arms, and gave it to her husband, when she retired: – he took a small slip of paper, on which he wrote the name Edward with a pencil; and, being a Papist also, and as superstitious as you please, he made with a penknife the sign of the cross on the back of the infant’s neck, to make it cry, and laid it down just at the back of the arbour, into which he saw the gentleman enter. He retired a few paces to watch what would/ ensue, when presently he saw that meek and charitable stranger come from the arbour to where the child was, and take him up in his arms. ‘Whoever thou art,’ said he, ‘sweet innocent, thou art welcome; I accept thee as a present from God, and thou shalt be my
child.’ e words were so remarkable, he says, they yet found in his ears; and immediately a er the gentleman with the infant returned into the house.’ Evans, all whose tender passions were worked up to the highest pitch, could contain no longer; he burst into a ood of tears, to the surprise of Doctor Burton, and, falling on his knees, cried out, ‘Gracious God, whose path is in the deep waters, and whose ways are past nding out, I humbly adore thy providence, and thank thee that thou hast made me an instrument of shewing forth thy mercies to mankind’ – Rising he said, ‘Oh, Doctor Burton! I am the man – I was that a icted clergyman who found that infant/ in the situation you mention; and Edward, my Edward whom you know, and whom Lord Ravensdale has so long entertained, is that infant himself.’ Doctor Burton’s astonishment was now not less than Evans’s, neither was his joy less than his astonishment. His joy would have been great where-ever he had been able to discover the child; but to nd him in the amiable and accomplished Edward, who was already so dear to all the family, was an unlooked-for happiness that seemed to be the peculiar boon of Providence himself. Evans now begged that Carrol, with his attendants, might be brought in: he there related the whole story again circumstantially with his own mouth. Evans went up stairs, and returned with a small drawer of an escritoir in his hand. ‘Here, Doctor Burton! here, Michael Carrol! here is a deposit which I have now kept by me these twenty-three years: here is the little frock in which I found my dear Edward, and here is the slip of/ paper with his name Edward written, which I found with it. – See, Carrol, do you know it?’39 Carrol crossed himself, and said he would know it in any part of the world.
