In the packet of papers which the express had brought
to Sir George Staunton from Edinburgh, and which Butler, authorised by
his connection with the deceased, did not scruple to examine, he found
new and astonishing intelligence, which gave him reason to thank God he
had taken that measure.
Ratcliffe, to whom all sorts of misdeeds and misdoers were familiar,
instigated by the promised reward, soon found himself in a condition to
trace the infant of these unhappy parents. The woman to whom Meg
Murdockson had sold that most unfortunate child, had made it the
companion of her wanderings and her beggary, until he was about seven or
eight years old, when, as Ratcliffe learned from a companion of hers,
then in the Correction House of Edinburgh, she sold him in her turn to
Donacha dhu na Dunaigh. This man, to whom no act of mischief was unknown,
was occasionally an agent in a horrible trade then carried on betwixt
Scotland and America, for supplying the plantations with servants, by
means of _kidnapping,_ as it was termed, both men and women, but
especially children under age. Here Ratcliffe lost sight of the boy, but
had no doubt but Donacha Dhu could give an account of him.
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