ought up by Captain Clinton as his son. I was at Cheltenham with
Rupert Clinton, who has just passed us. We believed that we were twins
until the day came when a woman came down there and told me the story,
and told me that I was her son and yours; then I ran away, and here I
am."

"My wife!" the sergeant exclaimed passionately. "I have not seen or
heard of her for fifteen years. So she came down and told you that. She
is a bad lot, if ever there was one. And so she told you you were my
son? You may be, lad, for aught I know; and I should be well content to
know that it was so. But what did she come and tell you that for? What
game is she up to now? I always knew she was up to some mischief. What
was her motive in coming down to tell you that? Just let me know what
she said."

"She said she had deliberately changed me as an infant for my good, and
she proposed to me to continue the fraud, and offered, if I liked, to
swear to Rupert's being her child, so that I might get all the
property."

"And that she might share in it!" the sergeant laughed bitterly. "A bold
stroke that of Jane Humphreys. And how did she pretend to recognize you
as her child more than the other?"

"She told me that Captain Clinton's child had a tiny mole on his
shoulder, and as Rupert has such a mark, that settled the question."

"Jane Humphreys told you more than she knew herself. Whether she
intended to make the change of babies or not I don't know, but I believe
she did; but whether it was done by chance, or whether she purposely
mixed them up together, one thing I am certain of, and that is, that she
confused herself as well as every one else, and that she did not know
which was which. When I came into the room first she was like a woman
dazed, and, clever as she was, I am sure she was not putting it on. She
had thought, I fancy, that she could easily distinguish one from the
other, and had never fancied that she could have been confused as well
as other people. She undressed them, and looked them over and over, and
it was then she noticed the little mole on the shoulder, and she turned
to me and said, 'If I had but noticed this before I should always have
told them apart.'

"We had a pretty bad time of it afterwards, for it made me the laugh of
the whole regiment, and caused no end of talk and worry, and we had
frightful rows together. She taunted me with being a fool for not seeing
that there was money to be made out of it. She acknowled