to its address,) it is arranged that they should go on the ensuing morning to a notary public, and open the packet in his presence! This was done; on which they discovered the interesting document above referred to, explaining the theft of the packet which it accompanied, cased in parchment, sealed with three black seals, "evidently," said the young Alexander, in his letter to the prisoner, "my grandfather's seals--not like those _we_ have"--and with the following words, also instantly recognised as being in his grandfather's handwriting, on the packet--"_Some of my wife's family papers_"--that wife being the prisoner's mother, Hannah, daughter of John No. 3 (the Rev. John Alexander,) the "person of such great humility, and so perfectly unostentatious," according to her daughter's statement,[46] "that she did not take upon herself the title of Countess, though she often told her children that they had noble blood in their veins;--that she had two brothers, '_John_' and '_Benjamin_,' who had fully intended assuming their peerage honours, but for their premature death--_unmarried!_--whereby she," the lady aforesaid, "believed herself the last of the family of Alexander who were entitled to be Earls of Stirling!" The sheet of paper accompanying this mystic parchment packet had a black border, "owing to the death of the thief!"--who "had never dared to break the seals"--the threefold seals of the packet--"which accounts for the admirable state of preservation" in which the contents were after this forty years' interval!!![47] This inner packet the modest notary felt to be of too solemn a character to be opened in his presence; and recommended its being taken for that purpose to a functionary of commensurate solemnity--to wit, a proctor.[48] No sooner said than done: away they went to the proctor, with whom they were closeted five hours; and in whose presence--and that "of four witnesses"--the young gentleman ventured to cut the parchment over the middle black seal--and there appeared four enclosures which completely settled the business in favour of the claimant of the Stirling peerage. Never was anything so beautiful in aptitude. First, was a genealogical tree--thus: