ttention ever
since he arrived in the colony, and only last week he did me the honour
of confiding his views to me. You see I am candid with you."

"I thank you for it. I, too, will be candid with you. Mr. Wetherell, you
may set your mind at rest at once, this marriage will never take place!"

"And pray be so good as to tell me your reason for such a statement?"

"If you want it bluntly, because the young man now staying at Government
House is no more the Marquis of Beckenham than I am. He is a fraud, an
impostor, a cheat of the first water, put up to play his part by one of
the cleverest scoundrels unhung."

"Mr. Hatteras, this is really going too far. I can quite understand your
being jealous of his lordship, but I cannot understand your having the
audacity to bring such a foolish charge against him. I, for one, must
decline to listen to it. If he had been the fraud you make him out, how
would his tutor have got those letters from his Grace the Duke of
Glenbarth? Do you imagine his Excellency the Governor, who has known the
family all his life, would not have discovered him ere this? No, no,
sir! It won't do! If you think so, who has schooled him so cleverly? Who
has pulled the strings so wonderfully?"

"Why, Nikola, to be sure!"

Had I clapped a revolver to the old gentleman's head, or had the walls
opened and Nikola himself stepped into the room, a greater effect of
terror and consternation could not have been produced in the old
gentleman's face than did those five simple words. He fell back in his
chair gasping for breath, his complexion became ashen in its pallor, and
for a moment his whole nervous system seemed unstrung. I sprang to his
assistance, thinking he was going to have a fit, but he waived me off,
and when he had recovered himself sufficiently to speak, said
hoarsely--"What do you know of Dr. Nikola? Tell me, for God's
sake!--what do you know of him? Quick, quick!"

Thereupon I set to work and told him my story, from the day of my
arrival in Sydney from Thursday Island up to the moment of my reaching
his house, described my meeting and acquaintance with the real
Beckenham, and all the events consequent upon it. He listened, with an
awful terror growing in his face, and when I had finished my narrative
with the disappearance of my friend he nearly choked.

"Mr. Hatteras," he gasped, "will you swear this is the truth you are
telling me?"

"I solemnly swear it," I answered. "And will do so in pub