"On the 26th, I desired you to send another letter, imperfectly fastened, to the bank manager, by your valet, stating that, pending certain arrangements you had in contemplation, you did not intend to draw any further cheques upon your account without due notice being given. From that day no forged cheques were presented for payment. "During the whole of the time I was proceeding with my secret investigation, and have continued it until this date, with this result. "A person of the name of Ned, or Edward Chester, has lately returned from Australia, where he resided for ten or twelve years. Of his career there I have no information; the time employed by me in this investigation not having been long enough to obtain it. He is an Englishman, born in London, and living during his boyhood, and afterwards at intervals, in Rosemary Lane a common street, in a common locality, in the east of London. Since his return he has not made himself known to any of his former associates, with the exception of one, whom I will presently mention, and who can scarcely be called an associate. "Ned Chester, before he left for Australia, was a thief, but at the same time a person whose manners were superior to those of his associates. He took a strange fancy, as a young man, to a child, a little girl, living in Rosemary Lane, of whose parentage nothing was known. When he left for Australia, this little girl was probably not more than five or six years of age, but I do not pledge myself to a year or two. While he was in Australia he sent her money, which the man who has brought her up received and spent. Returning home, after an absence of ten or twelve years, he renewed his acquaintance with her. She is now a very beautiful young woman. "It was his intention to introduce himself in his proper name, having an idea that she must have been thinking of him during his absence as much as he had been thinking of her; but he amused himself at first by conversing with her as a stranger. He soon discovered that the young woman had no recollection of him, and that she had never bestowed a thought upon him; he discovered, also, that she was dissatisfied with her position in life, and that she had a fancy in her head that, because her parents were not known, she must certainly be a lady. He told her he was a gentleman, and when she asked for his name, he gave the name of Arthur Temple. He pledged her to secrecy upon this point, on the grounds that he did not wish to have anything to do with her friends and neighbours, and that family reasons required that their intimacy should for a time be kept from the knowledge of his father. He represented that, upon his father's death, who, he said, was an old man, he would come into possession of a large fortune. "Under the name of Arthur Temple, he meets the young woman regularly. He has given her presents, and has frequently written to her upon paper bearing your father's crest.