***** Sitting one winter night by a glorious winter fire, while the snow and
hail lashed the windows, and the wind without roared like Bottom, the
weaver, a pleasant voice whispered the foregoing tale. Here, as it
paused abruptly, and seemed to have done with the whole thing, I
naturally began to ask questions. What happened the dwarf and his
companions? What became of Hubert? Did Sir Norman and Lady Kingsley go
to Devonshire, and did either of them die of the plague? I felt, myself,
when I said it, that the last suggestion was beneath contempt, and so a
withering look from the face opposite proved; but the voice was obliging
enough to answer the rest of my queries. The dwarf and his cronies being
put into his majesty's jail of Newgate, where the plague was raging
fearfully, they all died in a week, and so managed to cheat the
executioner. Hubert went to France, and laid his claims before the royal
Louis, who, not being able to do otherwise, was graciously pleased to
acknowledge them; and Hubert became the Marquis de Montmorenci, and in
the fullness of time took unto himself a wife, even of the daughters of
the land, and lived happy for ever after.
And Sir Norman and Lady Kingsley did go to the old manor in Devonshire,
where--with tradition and my informant--there is to be seen to this day,
an old family-picture, painted some twelve years after, representing
the knight and his lady sitting serenely in their "ain ingle nook"
with their family around them. Sir Norman,--a little portlier, a little
graver, in the serious dignity of pater familias; and Leoline, with the
dark, beautiful eyes, the falling, shining hair, the sweet smiling lips,
and lovely, placid face of old. Between them, on three hassocks, sit
three little boys; while the fourth, and youngest, a miniature little
Sir Norman, leans against his mother's shoulder, and looks thoughtfully
in her sweet, calm face. Of the fate of those four, the same ancient
lore affirms: "That the eldest afterward bore the title of Earl of
Kingsley; that the second became a lord high admiral, or chancellor, or
something equally highfalutin; and that the third became an archbishop.
But the highest honor of all was reserved for the fourth, and youngest,"
continued the narrating voice, "who, after many days, sailed for
America, and, in the course of time, became President of the United
States."
Determined to be fully satisfied on this point, at least, the author
invested all her spare change in a catalogue of all the said Presidents,
from George Washington to Chester A. Arthur, and, after a diligent and
absorbing perusal of that piece of literature, could find no such name
as Kingsley whatever; and has been forced to come to the conclusion that
he most have applied to Congress to change his name on arriving in the
New World, or else that her informant was laboring reader a falsehood
when she told her so. As for the rest, "I know not how the truth may be;
I say it as 'twas said to me."