He stepped up to the platform and took a seat on one end of an old bench that flanked one side of it. On the other end sat Carol and Sue. The Imp, unable in her excitement to remain seated anywhere, stood near him, her great, blue eyes wide with wonder. A catbird sang at intervals in the willow above them, and the incessant lap-lap of the river ran like a musical accompaniment in their ears. Not one of the three girls was ever to forget this strange moment in their lives, not even its beautiful setting.

"It is hard for me to know just where to begin," Monsieur at length broke the silence by saying. "But, as I have said, mes enfants, you three have worked out for yourselves a difficult problem, so perhaps it is best that I commence by telling you where you were right, and end by pointing out where you erred. I hasten to begin.

"It may have been a foolish whim of mine that I bring with me to this country the three portraits that are so dear to me, and especially foolish to leave the one unveiled. I had, however, my reason for that, but I did not contemplate that the public was to be admitted to my room, as it had to be during our—during Louis' serious accident. All this, however, is beside the point. I will begin by telling you that I am not, as you have so shrewdly suspected, this 'Monsieur de Vaubert' that I call myself here. Truly, 'de Vaubert' is a part of my name, but it is not all. In France I am known as the Marquis Philippe de Vaubert de Fenouil. It is a title that is ancient and honorable. It goes back to the time of Louis XIII—yes, and even before that. When our Louis discovered the 'F' on my handkerchief, he was entirely right in his surmises, and I was not very astute to leave it lying about. N'est-ce-pas?"

He smiled deprecatingly at his three listeners, with a smile so genuine, so utterly friendly, that they found their dark suspicions melting away, even before his tale was well begun.

"To go back to the portrait, however. Yes, it is a very beautiful copy of Madame Lebrun's original. It was executed many years ago by an exceedingly clever copyist, and I doubt if many would know it from the original. It is my dearest possession. I will tell you why.

"My little friend, petite HÉlÈne here, by her wonderful ingenuity and perception has deduced the conjecture that the ill-used dauphin, who should have been Louis XVII, did not die in the Temple Tower, as history has recorded it. There have, indeed, been many legends to that effect. But the truest one, the truth, was never known to the world. There are remaining to-day but two families who are in possession of the facts,—my own and that of our friends the Meadows, whose real name, as you perhaps know, is Mettot. All the rest of that wonderful brotherhood which helped to rescue him are dead and gone, and the secret is dead with them.

"In order that you may fully understand, I will now give you a short account of the real story of the dauphin's rescue. As you know through your researches, after Simon the Cobbler was released from the care of the young king, the dauphin was placed in a small room and completely isolated from the world by bolts and bars. Not even his jailers saw him, only hearing him speak through an aperture in the door. It was the most inhuman treatment of a child that the world has known, and it is a thousand wonders that the boy survived. But he did. At the end of an awful six months, when Robespierre himself was sent to the guillotine and Barras came into power, the boy was removed from this horrible incarceration and brought to a large, clean room, where he was taken care of by two or three guardians chosen for their humanity and kindliness.

"It was at this period that a plot was formed by a league of warmhearted, loyal men,—not only royalists, but republicans, too,—to rescue the dauphin from his long imprisonment and send him somewhere, possibly out of the country, to live out the rest of his life in peace. This league was known as 'The Brotherhood of Liberation,' and the world to-day would stand amazed, did it know the members, the many famous members, who composed it. It has even been whispered that Barras himself and the great Napoleon Bonaparte—then young, poor, and comparatively unknown—were concerned in this plot. All that, however, is as it may be.

"But the main thing is this. The brotherhood was accustomed to meet secretly at the house of my grandfather, another Marquis de Fenouil, in Paris, for he was one of the chief leaders and originators of the scheme. Among them was a young fellow scarcely more than five years older than the dauphin, one Jean Mettot, who was deeply and devotedly interested in the plan. It seems that he and his little foster-sister, Yvonne Clouet, had once become acquainted with the dauphin as he played in happier years in his garden of the Tuileries. Through his intervention, the queen, Marie Antoinette herself, had given the young fellow's foster-mother quite a large sum to defray the overdue taxes on her home and thus enable her to keep it for her children. So grateful was this poor washerwoman, MÈre Clouet, and her little daughter Yvonne and her foster-son, Jean Mettot, whom she had adopted from the foundling hospital, that they had vowed to help the poor, ill-used dauphin, even to the extent of risking their lives for him.

"It was Jean Mettot who played one of the most important roles in the plan to smuggle the dauphin out of the Temple Tower. He was employed in that citadel as cook's assistant, and thus was able to give aid right on the spot, as it were. One of the dauphin's three guardians, Gomin, had also become a member of the brotherhood, else the plan could never have been carried out.

"On a given day a sick child who greatly resembled the dauphin was smuggled into the Tower in a basket of clean linen brought by MÈre Clouet, laundress for the Temple. This child was so ill that there was no possibility of his recovery. He was speedily substituted for the dauphin, who was carried up to the great unused attic of the Temple. There he was kept for several weeks, unknown to the world and tended only by Jean Mettot. When the sick child at length passed away, the authorities proclaimed that the dauphin was dead and that there was no further need to guard the Tower. It was then that the real dauphin was smuggled out of the Temple in a basket of soiled linen and taken to the home of the Clouets, where he remained for several days. He was finally removed by some of the members of the brotherhood in high authority, and was sent to a distant and obscure corner of France to be cared for and brought up, under an assumed name, by humble people. The brotherhood was then disbanded, being first sworn to secrecy by an inviolable oath never to reveal what had been done.

"The boy, Jean Mettot, later became a soldier in Napoleon's army and rose to the rank of officer. He finally married little Yvonne Clouet, and, as you have doubtless surmised, this John Meadows whom you know is his descendant,—his grandson, in short. The original Jean Mettot, however, and my grandfather, the marquis, kept closely in touch with each other for a time, drawn together by their mutual love and loyalty to the little dauphin. It was Jean Mettot alone who, several years after the escape of the dauphin, was summoned by that young man to Havre, in order that the dauphin might bid farewell to his rescuer. The dauphin was sailing for America, never to return. He intended, he said, to live there incognito, in some obscure capacity, as he had no desire ever to return to France and certainly never wished to rule over that nation.

"Jean Mettot later attempted to communicate the news of the dauphin's departure to my grandfather, but found that he had suddenly passed away and that his son had assumed the title. As Mettot was not certain whether the secret had been handed down to the son, he did not reveal his news. Many years later, when he was a middle-aged man, the notion took hold of him to go to America and see if he could discover any trace of the dauphin. He had nothing whatever to assist him, except the assumed name of the dauphin, 'Louis Charles Durant,' and the fact that the ship on which he had sailed had been bound for a New England port. I think it was Boston. With only these two points to aid him, he sailed for America to engage in his almost hopeless task.

"In all the years he had heard not so much as one syllable from the exile, but even this did not discourage him. He began his search in New England, shrewdly suspecting that 'Louis Durant' might not have traveled very far from his first landing-place. Many weeks and months of absolutely useless and fruitless effort followed. No one in any of the large cities, or even in the smaller towns, seemed to have heard of 'Louis Charles Durant' or of any one corresponding to his description. It was by sheer accident—when Jean Mettot's horse (he made it a practice to travel about on horseback) went lame one stormy night right by your Paradise Green—that he was forced to ask for a night's shelter in one of the only two houses on the Green at that time. It was on the door of the Durant house that he knocked, and none other than the dauphin himself opened it!"

At this point in the narrative Sue and Carol breathed a long sigh of intense interest, and the Imp came closer and rested her hand on Monsieur's knee.

"Yes, it is marvelous, is it not?" he went on. "There is a proverb which says, 'Truth is stranger than fiction,' and I have always found it so. I leave you to imagine the meeting between those two, for they quickly recognized each other. After a time Mettot heard the whole story from the dauphin. It ran like this:

"He had come to America, landing in New England and wandering about for a time, almost penniless and earning his way as he went by doing odds and ends of labor for the farmers. Singularly enough, he enjoyed it. Does it seem strange to you, mes enfants, that a king should enjoy himself in this fashion? Ah, but he no longer wished to be a king! Not for all the riches of the earth would he have gone back to his country and assumed his rightful title. His terrible childhood years in prison had given him a longing only for freedom and independence of thought and action and a desire for the most absolute simplicity of life.

"To Jean Mettot he confided how at length he had drifted out to this present farmstead, had apprenticed himself to the good farmer who owned it, and how for several years he had served him faithfully and well for a sum that was a mere pittance, but on which he could live happily. Two years later the farmer's daughter, who had married some time before, came home to her father's house a widow. After a time she and the dauphin became mutually attracted to each other and married. Six months after their marriage the farmer died, leaving his farm to his daughter and her husband, the unknown dauphin. At the time of Jean Mettot's visit they had a fine little son, then ten or twelve years old, and were as happy and contented as could well be imagined.

"Mettot made them quite an extended visit, but never did the dauphin reveal to his wife that he had ever known Mettot before, or give the least hint of his own identity. He said that he preferred these things to remain secrets forever, buried in the past. He told Mettot that he desired his descendants to remain in complete ignorance of his past and of their own origin. Should a crisis ever arise (now unforeseen by him), when it would be wise for any of his descendants to know their forefather's history, he had prepared for such an emergency a document which he had securely hidden away. He acquainted Jean with its hiding-place and gave him permission to transmit the secret to his own descendants. On no account, however, was it to be communicated to the dauphin's descendants, unless the aforementioned crisis should arise.

"Jean Mettot went back to France, and never again saw the son of Louis XVI. But he continued to keep in touch with 'Louis Charles Durant' of America, and to his own son he communicated the strange secret. And his son, in turn, communicated it to a son of his own, the present Jean Meadows whom you know. The dauphin died when he was scarcely more than middle-aged, for his constitution was never robust after the cruel hardships of his childhood. The son whom he left lived to a ripe old age on the same farm, and left an heir in his place to continue the line. This child, the father of our own Louis, becoming discontented, as he reached manhood, with the life on a simple New England farm, leased the property, as you probably know, and went out West to make his fortune. He married a young western girl on the Canadian frontier, and both were mortally injured in a terrible accident on one of the Great Lakes' steamers. He had time, however, before he died, to send word to France, to this present Jean Mettot, leaving their baby son in his care. The two families had always kept in touch, though none of the present generation had seen each other.

"I am sure you must be wondering during all this recital where I come into the story. It is about time for me to make my entrance. That is what I am about to disclose. Mettot and his daughter Yvonne, on hearing the sad news, forsook all and came to America to take possession of the baby, which was still being cared for at the hospital where its parents had died. The Mettot family had not prospered with the years, the present Jean's father having unfortunately lost the modest fortune that the original Jean had amassed. They were living in a humble way in a small French village, and had practically sacrificed everything to come over to America on what they considered an almost sacred charge.

"What, then, was to be done? Jean Mettot cast about in his mind for some time, considering the matter, but at length came to the conclusion that the crisis, spoken of by the original dauphin, had now arrived and that the time was come to disclose the secret to some one. But to whom? That was the great question. Suddenly he bethought himself of me, the present Marquis de Fenouil. He had not the slightest idea whether the secret of the dauphin's escape had been transmitted in our family, but, taking the risk, he wrote me a full account of the whole proceeding, throwing the present little orphan, so to speak, on my mercy.

"And now at last I enter. I cannot, indeed, give you the slightest idea what this wonderful news meant to me. The secret had been transmitted,—aye, it had become a sacred tradition in our family! Many long and fruitless searches had we made,—I, my father, and my grandfather before us,—to trace, if possible, the fate of that lost dauphin. Not one of us but would have sacrificed his all to have made sure of the after-history of our adored little monarch. The portrait that you have seen, and those of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, which I have always kept veiled, have been our most cherished family possessions, especially that of the dauphin. We worshipped the memory of that heroic little uncrowned monarch.

"Can you then understand what it meant to me to find myself at last on the track of a true descendant of the dauphin? For a time I could scarcely credit it. But I knew from my grandfather the part played by the original Jean Mettot, and I could see no reason to doubt that this tale of his descendant was genuine. My first impulse was to send for them at once, and to bring the child up as my own son, till he should be of suitable age to disclose the secret to him. But there were a number of strong objections to that course. I need not mention them all. One is sufficient. For the past twenty years I have not been strong. My health is only sustained by constant treatment from physicians, and I spend three quarters of my time at sanitariums and health resorts. I am seldom, if ever, in residence at my French estate. There were a number of other legal reasons why it was not wise for me to appear to adopt a child, presumably as my heir, which you would scarcely understand, so I will not recount them. Suffice it to say that I decided on a course which may seem strange to you, but which appealed to me as wisest at the time.

"The child was a mere baby, not yet a year old. I concluded that for the present it would be best to leave him in America, the land that his kingly ancestor had chosen to adopt. In Jean Mettot's name I leased the same Durant farmhouse that belonged to his father and that one day would be his own, sent the Mettots there with their infant charge, and instructed them to bring up the boy in ignorance of his real ancestry, until such time as I should deem it best to come over to America and take charge of his affairs. They have worthily fulfilled that charge, having kept me constantly informed of his growth and progress.

"In truth, I never supposed the interval would be so long before I should find it possible to come here. One matter after another,—my health chiefly,—has delayed me from year to year, though I have planned the trip more times than I care to count. During this past year, however, the news sent by our friends the Mettots proved somewhat disturbing to me. In order to explain this, I must now disclose to you my plans for 'Louis Charles Durant.' They are, as you will see, far from any schemes to restore the Bourbon monarchy in France. That would be in direct opposition to the wishes of the dead dauphin. No, I wished him to learn of his wonderful ancestry secretly, and only as something to be proud of. I wished him to grow up as my own son, and, when the time was ripe, I would legally adopt him. At first there were several obstacles in the way, but these have lately been removed. In my own heart, however, he would never be my son, but the king who should rightfully have ruled over me. I wished him to study statecraft and become a great political light—a French statesman—and perhaps some day make a great name in the world. He should be a king of men in deed and act, if he could not be in name and right. These were my ambitions for him. I felt that he must fall in with them."

The three listeners stirred uneasily, and the catbird in the tree above them uttered its odd, mournful cry. Monsieur paused a few seconds to gaze out over the blue heat-haze on the river. Then he went on:

"It was, therefore, disturbing tidings that I began to receive from Jean Mettot. At first his reports had been satisfactory in every respect. The boy was upright, manly, and entirely lovable in nature. Up to his tenth or twelfth year he had developed no traits that would seem in opposition to my plans for him. But of late my news of him had been very unwelcome to me. To begin with, he openly avowed that he cared nothing for France or French history and traditions. He was American to the core, and he actually boasted of it. This was not surprising, however, considering the fact that he had been born and brought up in this land. I promised myself that this difficulty would be easily overcome later. But there was something that troubled me more.

"The Mettots began to report that the boy was developing a strongly mechanical turn of mind, that he was constantly working with tools and contriving unique devices of his own for various mechanical purposes,—in short, that he was following directly in the footsteps of the unfortunate Louis XVI. It has always been my contention that if that monarch had devoted himself more to the affairs of his kingdom and less to puttering about with tools and locks, he never would have lost his throne. It was an ominous sign to me. But even then I hoped that it might prove merely a childish whim and fade away into other interests as the years progressed. It did not, as you very well know. I now feel it to be a family inheritance, impossible to overcome. I have resigned myself to it, only praying that in time other matters more important may overgrow and stifle the tendency.

"But I also realized that the day could no longer be delayed when I must make the trip across the ocean and see with my own eyes the great-grandson of our long-lost dauphin. Perhaps you think it strange that I did not send for him to be brought to me. But I had my reasons for that, also. I wished to see the boy in his natural environment. I wished him to know nothing of me. I wished to study him and learn his character, watch him at his work and play, observe him with his friends, and discover for myself his ambitions and tendencies. How could I know that I would really care for him personally, or he for me, unless I followed this course? I loved him already for his ancestry, but I wished to love him, if possible, for himself. And as I am an old, childless, lonely man, I wished him to love me for myself. Only by coming here incognito, I deemed, could this be accomplished.

"Well, mes enfants, I came. The history of my stay here you are fairly well acquainted with. At first, I confess, I was bitterly disappointed. The boy was a fine, upstanding, splendid specimen of American boyhood, but he was thoroughly American. He resembled in no way that I could see, facially at least, the portrait that I had brought with me. That, of course, was entirely natural; yet I was disappointed. At times I thought I could discern a fleeting resemblance, but it was always fleeting. Only at the time when he was so ill did I seem to see in him a resemblance to the little dauphin after he had been some time in prison."

At this point the three girls glanced at each other, and, noticing the exchanged look, Monsieur went on:

"Yes, that is what I meant by the 'Temple look,' which remark you say Louis overheard. But to proceed. The worst disappointment, however, was that terrible mechanical trait, a trait I found it impossible to overcome and to which I have now resigned myself. We had our quarrels and disputes over that subject, as you know, but at last I felt myself unable to cope with so strong a passion. I pass on to other things.

"I need scarcely tell you that during these passing months I have come to care deeply and tenderly for this boy. He may be different, entirely different from my ideal of him, but I have come to recognize his fine, genuine manliness, the entire lovableness of his character. His attitude toward me has never deviated from the courteous and thoughtful and attentive, except in the one instance of his boat, and I myself was at fault there! I feel that he is even developing a sort of fondness for me with the passing of time. When you realize that he knows nothing whatever of my real identity or my object in coming here (I think he rather suspects both at times), this is all the more admirable. As for my feeling for him, I adore him, mesdemoiselles,—I can say no more. He is the worthy descendant of a king, even though he be not French in anything but ancestry.

"You can easily see, then, what it meant to me when he made that astonishing announcement a few weeks ago. Could anything be more unutterably terrible for me to hear than that this most dangerous of all careers should be the chosen one of my adopted son-to-be? It is incredible to me, even yet. I am praying daily that the whim shall pass from him. In the first shock of it I thought that the time had come for me to disclose the truth to him, whether I was ready to do so or not. Yet on second thought I again hesitated. There is one link in the chain that is still missing. It is for that I am waiting, for I do not wish him to be made acquainted with the secret till I can lay the complete evidence before him.

"You remember, perhaps, that I spoke of a document, prepared by the dauphin and hidden by him in some spot, the secret of which he disclosed only to the original Jean Mettot. It was his wish that the document be found and delivered to his descendants, should a crisis ever arise when it would be deemed necessary to disclose the secret to them. That document, I am sorry to say, we have as yet been unable to discover. The original Mettot wrote the directions for finding the hiding-place in a sealed letter and left it with his son, who, in turn, left it in care of our John Meadows. Unfortunately, when this John Meadows and his daughter came to America they failed to bring the letter with them, because they supposed that they would return at once to France. More unfortunately still, since they have been here their little home was burned to the ground, and the letter, of course, disappeared in the conflagration. Meadows himself never read the letter, and he has only a vague remembrance that his grandfather once said in his hearing, when he was only a small child, that he believed the hiding-place to be somewhere near a chimney. That is absolutely the only clue we have had to work on.

"I need not tell you that the search for that document has been unceasing since I first arrived, and even before that. Every nook and cranny, from attic to cellar, has been ransacked without the slightest result. Unless the house itself is torn down, I see no possible hope of finding it. However, I do not yet utterly despair; and when the document does come to light, I will make the great disclosure to Louis and formulate my future plans. Circumstances may be such, however, that I shall have to put him in possession of the secret before the document is found. I should be sorry for that, as I wish him to feel that our evidence concerning this strange story is complete.

"And now, my friends, you know it all. I have hidden nothing from you. I have shown you my inmost heart. I have only one request—that you still keep this thing a secret from every one, especially from Louis."

He stopped, and there was silence. The catbird above them had flown away. The river was unruffled by the slightest breath. The water had ceased its lap-lap. The afternoon stillness was complete. Carol and Sue sat motionless in their corner, their hands clasped, their eyes wide and intent.

Suddenly the Imp flung herself to the ground and buried her face on the old French gentleman's knees, a passion of choking sobs shaking her little body. He laid his hand on her head and murmured in a startled voice:

"Little one, little one! What is it that troubles you?"

"O Monsieur, Monsieur!" she gasped. "What a little beast I've been! Can you ever forgive me? How I have misjudged you!"