tever
his name be--a right good fellow, frank, straightforward, and, so far as
I see, honest. We hit it off wonderfully together, and became such
good friends that I took him down to my little crib at Bayswater,--an
attention, I suspect, not ill timed, as he does not seem flush of money.
He told me the whole story of his claim, and the way he came first to
know that he had a claim. It was all discovered by a book, a sort of
manuscript journal of his great grandfather's, every entry of which he,
Pracontal, believes to be true as the Bible. He does not remember ever
to have seen his father, though he may have done so before he was put to
the Naval School at Genoa. Of his mother, he knows nothing. From all I
have seen of him, I 'd say that you and he have only to meet to become
warm and attached friends; and it's a thousand pities you should leave
to law and lawyers what a little forbearance, and a little patience, and
a disposition to behave generously on each side might have settled at
once and forever.

"'In this journal that I mentioned there were two pages gummed together,
by accident or design, and on one of these was a sketch of a female
figure in a great wreath of flowers, standing on a sort of pedestal,
on which was written,--"Behind this stone I have deposited books or
documents." I 'm not sure of the exact words, for they were in Italian,
and it was all I could do to master the meaning of the inscription. Now,
Pracontal was so convinced that these papers have some great bearing on
his claim, that he asked me to write to you to beg permission to make
a search for them under the painting at Castello, of which this
rough sketch is evidently a study. I own to you I feel little of that
confidence that he reposes in this matter. I do not believe in the
existence of the papers, nor see how, if there were any, that they
could be of consequence. But his mind was so full of it, and he was so
persistent in saying, "If I thought this old journal could mislead me,
I 'd cease to believe my right to be as good as I now regard it," that
I thought I could not do better, in your interest, than to take him with
me to Sedley's, to see what that shrewd old fox would say to him.
P. agreed at once to go; and, what pleased me much, never thought of
communicating with his lawyer nor asking his advice on the step.

"'Though I took the precaution to call on Sedley, and tell him what sort
of man P. was, and how prudent it would be to hear