第194章

"Edward Hopgood!" exclaimed Harry, passing his hand over his forehead--" surely I have heard that name before. Wait a moment," he added, to Stebbins; while he endeavoured to recollect why that name, singular in itself, had a familiar sound to him. At length his eye brightened, the whole matter became more clear; he recollected when a mere child, a year or two before Mr. Stanley's death, while staying at Greatwood during a vacation, to have heard of the bad conduct of a young man named Edward Hopgood, a lawyer's clerk in the adjoining village, who had committed forgery and then run away. The circumstances had occurred while Harry was at Greatwood, and had been so much talked of in a quiet, country neighbourhood, as to make a decided impression on himself, child as he was. Harry also remembered to have heard Mr. Stanley tell Mr. Wyllys that this Hopgood was very distantly related to himself, through the mother, who had made a very bad connexion; adding, that this lad had been at Greatwood, and would have been assisted by himself, had he not behaved very badly, and done so much to injure his own son that he had been forbidden the house. Harry farther remembered, that Clapp had belonged to the same office from which this Hopgood had run away. There was, however, one point which he did not understand; he thought he had since heard that this Hopgood had turned actor, and died long since of yellow-fever, at New Orleans. Still, he felt convinced that there was a good foundation for Stebbins's story, and he hoped soon to unravel the whole plot, from the clue thus placed in his hands.

"Go on," said Harry, after this pause. "You say this man, whom you knew to be Hopgood, called himself William Stanley. What became of him?"

"It is the same chap that hoisted your colours, Mr. Hazlehurst; him that the jury gave the verdict to in Philadelphia."

"Yes; I knew it must be the same individual before you spoke," said Harry, with a view to keep his informant accurate. "But how did you know that his name was Hopgood? for you say he had shipped under another."

"I knew it because he had told me so himself. He told me how he had run away from a lawyer's office in Pennsylvany, gone to New Orleans and turned play-actor a while, then shammed dead, and had his name printed in the papers among them that died of yellow-fever. He told me all that in his first voyage, when we were shipmates, and that was just the time that my brother Jonathan was wrecked in the Jefferson."

"When you afterwards heard him say he was William Stanley, did you tell him you knew his real name?"

"Yes; I told him I knew he lied; for my brother had buried Stanley with his own hands, and that I had his papers at home.

Then he told me, he was only laughing at the green-horns."

"Did you mention to any one at the time that you knew this man was not William Stanley?"

"No, sir, for I didn't speak to him until we were alone; and we parted company next morning, for I went to sea."

"When did you next see Hopgood?"

"Well, I didn't fall in with him again for a long while, until this last spring. When I came home from a voyage to China in the Mandarin, last May, I went to my mother's, near New Bedford, and then I found a chap had been to see her in the winter, and persuaded her to give him all the papers in the old chest, that had belonged to William Stanley, making out he was one of the young man's relations. It was that lawyer Clapp; and Hopgood had put him on the track of them 'ere papers."

"What were the documents in your chest?"

"Most of what they had to show came from me: to be sure, Hopgood had got some letters and papers, written to himself of late years under the name of William Stanley; but all they had before the wreck of the Jefferson came from me."

"Were there any books among the articles in your possession?"

"No, sir; nothing but the pocket-book."

"Are you quite sure? Was there not one book with William Stanley's name in it?"

"Not one; that 'ere book they had in court didn't come from me; how they got it I don't know," replied Stebbins positively; who, it seemed, knew nothing of the volume of the Spectator.

"Where did you next meet Hopgood?"

"Well, I was mad when I found he had got them papers; but the lawyer had left a message with my mother, saying if I came home, she was to tell me I'd hear something to my advantage by applying to him. So I went after him to the place where he lives; and sure enough there was Hopgood, and he and Clapp as thick as can be together. I guess they'd have liked it better if I had never showed myself again: but they got round me, and told me how it was all settled, and if I would only lend a hand, and keep quiet about Hopgood, and speak for them once in a while, they would enter into an agreement to give me enough to make a skipper of me at once. Them 'ere lawyers they can make black look like white--and so I agreed to it at last."

Hazlehurst strongly suspected that less persuasion had been necessary than the man wished him to believe.

"Did they tell you all their plan?"

"Pretty much all; they said it was easy to make people believe Hopgood was William Stanley, for he looked so much like the young man, that he had been asked if that wasn't his name. He said it was that first gave him the notion of passing off for William Stanley--that, and knowing all about the family, and the young man himself. He said Stanley had no near relations who would be likely to remember him; there was only one old gentleman they was afraid of, but they calculated they knew enough to puzzle him too. Hopgood had been practising after Stanley's handwriting; he was pretty good at that trade when he was a shaver," said Stebbins, with a look which showed he knew the story of the forgery. "He was bred a lawyer, and them 'ere lawyers are good at all sorts of tricks. Clapp and him had made out a story from my papers and what they know'd before, and got it all ready in a letter; they agreed that from the time of the wreck, they had better keep pretty straight to Hopgood's real life; and so they did."

"They seem to have laid all their plans before you."