It required some address on Crowther's part to bring back MacNaghten to that calm and deliberate tone of mind which the subject demanded. After a while, however, he perfectly succeeded; and Dan arose, and accompanied him to the library, where they both proceeded to search among my father's papers, with which several boxes were filled. CHAPTER XVIII. DISAPPOINTMENTS The search for any document that could authenticate my father's marriage proved totally unsuccessful, and although poor MacNaghten's zeal was untiring and unwearied, all his efforts were fruitless. Guided by the clew afforded in some of my father's letters, Dan proceeded to Wales, ascertained the cottage where they had passed their first month of married life, and found out many who had known them by sight; but could chance upon nothing which should lead him to the important fact where, and by whom, the marriage ceremony was solemnized. The state of my mother's health was so precarious for a long time as to render all inquiry from her impracticable; while there was also a very natural fear of the consequences that might ensue, were she to suspect the object of any investigation, and learn the perilous position in which she stood. Her condition was, indeed, a pitiable one,--a young and widowed mother; a stranger in a foreign land, of whose language she knew scarcely anything; without one friend of her own sex, separated by what, in those days, seemed an immense distance from all belonging to her. It was a weary load of misfortune to be borne by one who till that moment had never known a sorrow. Nor was MacNaghten's lot more enviable as, day by day, he received packets of letters detailing the slow but steady march of those legal proceedings which were to end in the ruin of those whom he felt to have been bequeathed to his friendship. Already two claimants for the estate had appeared in the field,--one, a distant relation of my father, a very rich southern baronet, a certain Carew O'Moore; the other, an unknown, obscure person, whose pretensions, it was said, were favored by Fagan, and at whose cost the suit was said to be maintained. With the former, MacNaghten at once proceeded to open relations personally, by a letter describing in simple but touching terms the sad state in which my poor mother yet lay, and appealing to his feelings as a gentleman and a man of humanity to stay the course of proceedings for a while, at least, and give time to enable her to meet them by such information as she might possess.