I tell you his name? No? Alfred Braddell--had one friend more intimate
than the rest,--John Walter Ardworth, a cashiered officer, a ruined man,
pursued by bill-brokers, Jews, and bailiffs. To this man we have lately
had reason to believe that the child was given. Ardworth, however, was
shortly afterwards obliged to fly his creditors. We know that he went to
India; but if residing there, it must have been under some new name, and
we fear he is now dead. All our inquiries, at least after this man, have
been fruitless. Before he went abroad, he left with his old tutor a
child corresponding in age to that of Mrs. Braddell's. In this child she
thinks she recognizes her son. All that you have to do is to trace his
identity by good legal evidence. Don't smile in that foolish way,--I
mean sound, bona fide evidence that will stand the fire of cross-
examination; you know what that is! You will therefore find out,--first,
whether Braddell did consign his child to Ardworth, and, if so, you must
then follow Ardworth, with that child in his keeping, to Matthew
Fielden's house, whose address you find noted in the paper I gave you,
together with many other memoranda as to Ardworth's creditors and those
whom he is likely to have come across."

"John Ardworth, I see!"

"John Walter Ardworth,--commonly called Walter; he, like me, perferred to
be known only by his second baptismal name. He, because of a favourite
Radical godfather; I, because Honore is an inconvenient Gallicism. And
perhaps when Honore Mirabeau (my godfather) went out of fashion with the
sans-culottes, my father thought Gabriel a safer designation. Now I have
told you all."

"What is the mother's maiden name?"