keness in features to the great Captain Touan
himself, who, as you have heard, is a handsome dog. In short, there is
very little doubt that they are father and son."

Tom thought to himself, "Who on earth can this be? What son can George
Hawker have, and we not know of it?" He turned to Burnside.

"What age is the young man you speak of?" he asked.

"Twenty, or thereabouts, by all description," said the other.

Tom thought again: "This gets very strange. He could have no son of
that age got in Van Diemen's Land: it was eight years before he was
free. It must be some one we know of. He had some byeblows in Devon, by
all accounts. If this is one of them, how the deuce did he get here?"

But he could not think. We shall see presently who it was. Now we must
leave these good folks for a time, and just step over to Garoopna, and
see how affairs go there.

Chapter XXXIII

IN WHICH JAMES BRENTWOOD AND SAMUEL BUCKLEY, ESQUIRES, COMBINE TO
DISTURB THE REST OF CAPTAIN BRENTWOOD, R.A. AND SUCCEED IN DOING SO.

The morning after Cecil Mayford had made his unlucky offer to Alice, he
appeared at Sam's bedside very early, as if he had come to draw Priam's
curtains; and told him shortly, that he had spoken, and had been
received with contempt; that he was a miserable brute, and that he was
going back home to attend to his business;--under the circumstances,
the best thing he could possibly do.

So the field was clear for Sam, but he let matters stay as they were,
being far too pleasant to disturb lightly; being also, to tell the
truth, a little uncertain of his ground, after poor Cecil had suffered
so severely in the encounter. The next day, too, his father and mother
went home, and he thought it would be only proper for him to go with
them, but, on proposing it, Jim quietly told him he must stay where he
was and work hard for another week, and Halbert, although a guest of
the Buckleys, was constrained to remain still at the Brentwoods', in
company with Sam.

But at the end of a week they departed, and Jim went back with them,
leaving poor Alice behind, alone with her father. Sam turned when they
had gone a little way, and saw her white figure still in the porch,
leaning in rather a melancholy attitude against the door-post. The
audacious magpie had perched himself on the top of her head, from which
proud elevation he hurled wrath, scorn, and mortal defiance against
them as they rode away. Sam took off his hat, and a