."

"And I'm not afraid for anybody to know it," interrupted Mr. Drayton.
"Come to the point honest. Look here, we are like two hyenas I saw one
day at the Zoo. One got a bone in his tooth at feeding time, and blest
if the other didn't fight for that bone I don't know how long and all."

"Well," continued Hugh Ritson, with a dubious smile that the cloud of
smoke might have hidden from a closer observer, "being a man of spirit,
and not without knowledge of the world, having inherited brains, in
short, from the parents who bequeathed you nothing else--"

Mr. Drayton puffed volumes, then poured himself half a tumbler of the
raw spirit and tossed it off.

--"You determined on seeing if, after all, this were only a fortuitous
resemblance."

Mr. Drayton raised his hand. "I am a licensed victualer, that's what I
am, and I ain't flowery," he said, in an apologetic tone; "I hain't had
the chance of it, being as I'd no schooling--but, deng me, you've just
hit it!" And the gentleman who could not be flowery shook hands
effusively with the gentleman who could.

"Precisely, Mr. Drayton, precisely," said Hugh Ritson. He paused and
watched Drayton closely. That worthy had removed his pipe, and was
staring, with stupid eyes and open mouth, into the fire.

"But you found nothing."

"How d'ye know?"

"Your face at this moment says so."

"Pooh! Don't you go along trusting this here time-piece for the time o'
day. It ain't been brought up in habits o' truthfulness same as yours."

Hugh Ritson laughed.

"You and I are meant to be friends, Mr. Drayton," he said. "But let us
first understand each other. Your idea that you could find your parents
in Cumberland was a pure fallacy."

"Eh! Why?"

"Because your mother is dead."

Drayton shook off the stupor of liquor, and betrayed a keen if momentary
interest.

"The book of the asylum in which she was confined, after the attempted
suicide, contains the record--"

"But she escaped," interrupted Drayton.

"Contains the record of her escape and subsequent recovery--dead. The
body was picked out of the river, recognized by the authorities as that
of the unknown woman, and buried in the name she gave."

"What name?" said Drayton.

Hugh Ritson's face underwent a momentary change.

"That is indifferent," he said; "I forget."

"Sure you forget?" said Drayton. "Couldn't be Ritson, eh?"

Hugh struck the table.

"Assuredly not--the name was not Ritson."

The tone irritated M