After a restful night, and when breakfast had been despatched, we adjourned to a room used as an office and sitting apartment, and there I was subjected to a sympathetic cross-examination. Every incident of my life, even to the fancies that had fled across the mind of callow boyhood, was elicited with the assistance of his searching questions, and then I was, as it were, turned completely inside out. Mr. Stanley said that what I had told him only bore out the conclusion he had long before arrived at concerning me. He had suspected that I was an orphan, or one who had been flatly disowned, and a waif exposed to every wind of Chance; and he was glad that it had deposited me in his keeping. He expressed amazement that helpless children were treated so unfeelingly in England, and marvelled that no one cared to claim them. Being a childless man, he and his wife had often prayed for the blessing of offspring, until they were wearied with desiring and expecting. Then they had gone to the Faubourg St. Mary, and had visited the Infant Asylum, with the view of adopting some unclaimed child; but they had made no choice, from over-fastidiousness. It much surprised him that none of my relations had discovered in me what had struck him and Speake. Had he searched New Orleans all through, he said, he could not have found one who would have shared his views respecting me with more sympathy than his friend; and, had Mr. Speake lived, he added, I should have been as good as established for life. Mr. Speake had written his estimates of my character often, and, in one letter, had predicted that I was cut out for a great merchant, who would eventually be an honour to the city. Mr. Kitchen, the book-keeper, had also professed to be impressed with my qualities; while young Richardson had said I was a prodigy of activity and quick grasp of business.