or a few months might save him, the doctor said--it
was only yesterday he told us that--father took the clock out of the
house unknown to us, and--and came at once to you. He is so very
impetuous, poor father."

"Ah! is he? And who put the clock in working order, may I ask?"

"I did."

"You!"

"I was brought up to the watch-making--I am rather clever at it, they
say."

[Illustration: "WENT TO MADEIRA WITH KITTY AND THE BOY."]

"Clever. By George, I should think you were! Why, in a business like
mine you would be invaluable."

"I was always handy with my fingers."

"So was your half-brother--it seems to run in the family."

"Oh!"

"I beg pardon," I said, for the second time. "I--I did not mean to say
that. It slipped out promiscuously."

"Never mind, sir--never mind," she said hurriedly. "What are you going
to do? Pray tell me what you think of doing when I prove the truth of
this."

"If it's all true--and I believe it is already, Miss Youson--I--I am
going to withdraw from the prosecution, and ask your father to bring an
action against me for illegal detention."

"Oh! he would never think of such a thing."

And he never did. The story was quite true, every word of it, and we
arranged to keep it from the old man, so far as the peculiar profession
of his first-born was concerned. He never knew _that_. I got rather
intimate with the Youson family by degrees, although our acquaintance
had begun so inauspiciously. Rather intimate, I say--well, very
intimate, rather! would be a clear expression, if a trifle inelegant.

For I married that girl, and pensioned off Mrs. Kibbey, and I never did
such a fine stroke of business in all my life. The old man--he was a
fine old fellow, too--went to Madeira with Kitty and the boy, and I bore
Lucinda off to Streatham. She is one of the best of wives, and so very
handy in the business too--saves me a heap of money. It was a lucky day
for me when that rascal of a half-brother of hers broke burglariously
into Golden Birch Villa, and took away everything that had an atom's
worth of precious metal in its composition. It was a blessing very much
in disguise, but it has answered its purpose thoroughly well. I am as
happy as the day is long--and so is Lucinda. Everybody tells me that I
secured a treasure when I took her for better, for worse. Everybody but
Mrs. Kibbey--past housekeeper, and living with her sister now in the
Cookshops Almshouses at Caterham--and she says I could