lied, "although I felt
stunned, at first. Did you never hear of my having lost my child?"

"No, indeed," Colonel Shepherd replied, more and more
surprised--for he had at first supposed that some sudden access of
fever, or delirium, had seized his friend. "You will remember that,
a week or two after you were married, my regiment was moved up to
the north; and we remained three years longer in India. When I got
back to England, I heard that you had lost your wife, a short time
before, and had returned. I remember our ships crossed on the way.
When we met again, the conversation never turned on the past."

"I will tell you the story," the colonel said, "and you will see
that, at any rate, the boy may be my son and, that being so, the
double likeness proves to me, incontestably, that he is.

"I had, as you know, been ill before I left India. I had not been
home for fifteen years, and got two years' leave. As you may know,
I had a good fortune, irrespective of the service; and I took a
place called Holmwood Park, near Dawlish and, as I had thought of
retiring, at the end of my leave, I was put on the commission of
the peace. My boy was born a few months after I got home.

"Soon after I took the place, some gipsy fellows broke into the
poultry yard, and stole some valuable chickens--which were great
pets of my wife. I chased them and, finally, brought home the guilt
of the theft to one of the men, in whose tent a lot of their
feathers were found. He had been previously convicted, and was
sentenced to a term of penal servitude.

"Before the trial his wife--also a gipsy--called upon me, and
begged me not to appear against her husband, This, of course, was
out of the question, as he had already been sent to trial. When she
found that her entreaties were useless she, in the most vindictive
tone, told me that I should repent it; and she certainly spoke as
if she meant it.

"I heard nothing more of the matter, until the boy was sixteen
months old. Then he disappeared. He was stolen from the garden. A
clue was left, evidently that I might know from whom the blow came.
The gipsy had been convicted partly on the evidence of the
feathers; but principally from the fact that the boot, which he had
on, had half the iron on the heel broken off, and this tallied
exactly with some marks in my fowl house. An hour after the child
was gone we found, in the center of the drive, in the park, a boot,
conspicuously placed there to catch the