"Your mother, I think, lived for only a few months after your father
left England. You found a guardian in Mr. Ascough of Lincoln's Inn
Fields. There my knowledge of your history ceases.

"How do you know these things?" Brooks asked.

"I was with your father when he died. It was I who wrote to you and
sent his effects to England."

"You were there--in Canada?"

"Yes. I had a dwelling within a dozen miles of where your father had
built his hut by the side of the great lake. He was the only other
Englishman within a hundred miles. So I was with him often."

"It is wonderful--after all these years," Brooks exclaimed. "You were
there for sport, of course?"

"For sport!" his visitor repeated in a colourless tone.

"But my father--what led him there? Why did he cut himself off from
every one, send no word home, creep away into that lone country to die
by himself? It is horrible to think of."

"Your father was not a communicative man. He spoke of his illness. I
always considered him as a person mentally shattered. He spent his days
alone, looking out across the lake or wandering in the woods. He had no
companions, of course, but there were always animals around him. He had
the look of a man who had suffered."

"He was to have gone to Australia," Brooks said. "It was from there
that we expected news from him. I cannot see what possible reason he
had for changing his plans. There was no mystery about his life in
London. It was one splendid record of self-denial and devotion to what
he thought his duty."

"From what he told me," his vis-a-vis continued, handing again his
cigarette-case, and looking steadily into the fire, "he seems to have
left England with the secret determination never to return. But why I
do not know. One thing is certain. His mental state was not altogether
healthy. His desire for solitude was almost a passion. Towards the
end, however, his mind was clear enough. He told me about your mother
and you, and he handed me all the papers, which I subsequently sent to
London. He spoke of no trouble, and his transition was quite peaceful."

"It was a cruel ending," Brooks said, quietly. "There were people in
London whom he had befriended who would have worked their passage out
and faced any hardships to be with him. And my mother, notwithstanding
his desertion, believed in him to the last."

There was a moment's intense silence. This visitor who had come so
strangely was to all appearance a man not