You will once more take part in the games and
lessons of happy boyhood. (Did you ever play 'chevy' when you were a boy
before? You'll enjoy chevy.) And you will find your companions easy
enough to get on with, if you don't go giving yourself airs; they won't
stand airs. Now good-bye, my boy, and bless you!"

Paul stood staring stupidly at this outrageous assumption; he could
scarcely believe yet that it was meant in cruel earnest. Before he could
answer, the door opened and Boaler appeared.

"Had a deal of trouble to find a keb, sir, on a night like this," he
said to the false Dick, "but the luggage is all on top, and the man says
there's plenty of time still."

"Good-bye then, my boy," said Dick, with well-assumed tenderness, but a
rather dangerous light in his eye. "My compliments to the Doctor,
remember."

Paul turned indignantly from him to the butler; he, at least, would
stand by him. Boaler would not see a master who had always been fair, if
not indulgent, to him driven from his home in this cold-blooded manner!

He made two or three attempts to speak, for his brain whirled so with
scathing, burning things to say. He would expose the fraud then and
there, and defy the impudent usurper; he would warn every one against
this spurious pinchbeck imitation of himself. The whole household should
be summoned and called upon to judge between the two!

No doubt, if he had had enough self-command to do all this effectually,
while Dick had as yet not had the time thoroughly to adapt himself to
his altered circumstances, he might have turned the situation at the
outset, and spared himself some very painful experiences.

But it is very often precisely those words which are the most vitally
important to be said that refuse to pass our lips on a sudden emergency.
We feel all the necessity of saying something at once, but the necessary
words unaccountably desert us at the critical moment.

Mr. Bultitude felt himself in this unfortunate position. He made more
wild efforts to explain, but the sense of his danger only petrified his
mind instead of stimulating it. Then he was spared further conflict. A
dark mist rose before his eyes; the walls of the room receded into
infinite space; and, with a loud singing in his ears, he fell, and
seemed to himself to be sinking down, down, through the earth to the
very crust of the antipodes. Then the blackness closed over him--and he
knew no more.

3. _In the Toils_

"I be