him, and he studied the movements of the lips of those who spoke to him
with a keen, grave scrutiny to them highly amusing--except in the case of
his poor old Aunt Jane, who turned quite pale under his inquisition, and
declared that he must be bewitched, for although he seemed to know
nothing, yet he had the knowingest look of any child she ever saw. Herein
Aunt Jane gave utterance to a fact that was beginning to be generally
acknowledged. Whatever Archibald had lost, it was beyond dispute that he
had somehow come into possession of a fund of native intelligence (the
term "mother wit" seems inappropriate under the circumstances) to which he
had heretofore been a stranger. He might have forgotten his own name, and
the mother that bore him; but he had learned how to learn, and was for the
first time in his life wide awake. This was very much like saying that he
was a new boy in the old skin; and this, again, was little better than a
euphemism for changeling. Was he a changeling after all? The sage old
woman whom we have already quoted asserted confidently that he was, and
that, however much he pretended to ignorance, he really knew vastly more
than any plain human child did or ought to know. And as a warrant for this
opinion they brought forward evidence that Master Archibald, having been
left alone one day in the nursery, had been overheard humming to himself
the words of a certain song--a thing, it was argued, which he could not
have done had he known no words at all; and therefore he was a changeling.


Dr. Rollinson happened to hear this argument, and thought it worth while to
inquire further into the matter. Such testimony as he could collect went
to confirm the truth of the story. Not only so, but the song itself, if
the witnesses were to be believed, so far from being an ordinary childish
ditty, was some matter of pretty maids and foaming wine-cups that Tom
Moore might have written, and that gentlemen sometimes trolled out, an
hour or two after dinner. Now this looked very black for Archibald.