Aunt Ruth is my late mother's maiden
sister, Mr. Cleek. My mother died at my birth, and Aunt Ruth brought me
up. As I told you, my father retired from the sea some years ago, and,
having purchased an annuity, lived on that. He managed to scrape enough
together to have me schooled properly and put through Sandhurst, and
when I got my lieutenancy, and was subsequently appointed to a
commission in India, I left him living in the little old cottage where I
was born. With him were Aunt Ruth and Paul and Lucretia Cordova. Up to
about eight months or so ago he continued to live there, devoting
himself to his little garden and enjoying life on land as much as a man
who loves the sea ever can do. Then, of a sudden, Lucretia Cordova fell
in with Colonel Goshen, and introduced him to the pater. A few days
after that my father seems to have eaten something which disagreed with
him, for he was suddenly seized with all the symptoms of ptomaine
poisoning. He rallied, however, but from that point a strange weakness
overcame him, and at the colonel's suggestion he went for a sail round
the coast with him. He did not improve. The weakness seemed to grow, but
without any sign of the horrible bodily suffering with which he is now
afflicted.

"Colonel Goshen is a great friend of Dr. Fordyce's, and through that
friendship managed to interest him in the case to such a degree that he
made a twenty-mile trip especially to see my father. They struck up a
great friendship. Fordyce was certain, he said, that he could cure the
dad if he had him within daily reach, and, on the dad saying that he
couldn't afford to come over to this part of the country and keep up two
establishments, Fordyce came to the rescue, like the jolly brick he is.
In other words, his place here being a good deal larger than he
requires, he's a bachelor, Mr. Cleek, he put up a sort of partition to
separate it into two establishments, so to speak, put one-half at the
dad's disposal rent free, and there he is housed now, and Aunt Ruth and
the two Cordovas with him. Yes, and even me, now; for as soon as he
heard that I was coming home on leave, Fordyce wouldn't listen to my
going to 'The Three Desires' for digs, but insisted that I, too, should
be taken in, and a clinking suite of rooms in the west wing put at my
disposal.

"But in spite of all his hopes for the dear old dad's eventual cure,
things in that direction have grown steadily worse. The horrible malady
which is now co