'Certainly so, sir. And the mate knew how to pass the time at the village inn while I was away. He is a sailor as well as myself.' 'You saw your intended at the Hall?' 'Yes, in the housekeeper's room; the housekeeper herself being there sometimes--sometimes not.' 'Was this girl Maggie's character unimpeachable, Captain Paterson? She was really a good girl?' 'I'd have knocked the man who dared to doubt it into the middle of next week, sir; and she was good enough to make my wife.' 'You would have heard her speak of the child?' 'Oh yes, and she nearly went out of her mind with grief when it disappeared, and it was soon after this that we became man and wife.' His brown-bearded mate was the next called. He testified to going down to Broxley with Captain Paterson, and indeed to all he said. Then he was asked about the finding of the little boat at sea, with Lotty therein, and her life on board, and of the captain's wife discovering on the little gipsy lass the birth-marks, and informing her husband and himself; and the witness concluded by informing the court that he considered the whole occurrence simply a ‘’tarposition of Providence, and nothing else.' Then came good, kind Mrs Paterson herself. Her story took the court back to the time when she became nurse-companion to the child at Broxley Hall. She would willingly have married before; but Mr Paterson, whom she had known and been engaged to for many years, wanted first and foremost to be in a good position, and to walk his own quarterdeck as captain, because then he could take her to sea with him. 'Well,' said counsel, 'tell us briefly about the disappearance of the child. You had been nurse for some little time before this, hadn't you?' 'Yes, sir, and the child was much attached to me.' 'You gave perfect satisfaction?' 'Oh yes, sir, for I stayed on months after the child was stolen, and indeed, I may say, I was married from the Hall.' 'Was a hue and cry raised?' 'Yes, and rewards offered, but all to no purpose.' 'The mystery remained a mystery?' 'That's it, sir.' 'And about the birth-marks?' 'They were there on the infant I nursed, sir, and I found them on the girl Lotty whom we picked up in the North Sea.' 'Is it not possible'--this from the judge--'that the marks on Lotty Lee's side may only be of some fancied resemblance to those on the infant child and heir to Broxley estates?' 'There is no fancy about it, my lord; they are the same. I swear to that.' 'After ten long years and over?' 'Women can remember longer back than that, sir.' 'No doubt, no doubt.' Mrs Paterson was cross-questioned at some length by John Crawford's counsel, but without causing her to deviate in the slightest from any portion of her strange story.