wo men looked at each other--Drayton suspicious, Hugh Ritson with
amused contempt.

"Tell you what, you don't catch me hobnobbing with them gentry," said
Drayton, recovering his composure.

Hugh Ritson made no other answer than a faint smile. As he looked into
the face of Drayton, he was telling himself that no man had ever before
been at the top of such a situation as that of which he himself was then
the master. Here was a man who was the half-brother of Greta, and the
living image of her husband. Here was a man who, despite vague
suspicions, did not know his own identity. Here was a man over whom hung
an inevitable punishment. Hugh Ritson smiled at the daring idea he had
conceived of making this man personate himself.

"Drayton," he said, "I mean to stand your friend in this trouble."

"Tell you again, the best friend to me is the man as helps me to make my
lucky."

"You shall do it, Drayton, this very night. Listen to me. That man, my
brother, as they call him--Paul Ritson, as his name goes--is not my
father's son. He is the son of my mother by another man, and his true
name is Paul Lowther."

"I don't care what his true name is, nor his untrue, neither. It ain't
nothing to me, say I, and no more is it."

"Would it be anything to you to inherit five thousand pounds?"

"What?"

"Paul Lowther is the heir to as much. What would you say if I could put
you in Paul Lowther's place, and get you Paul Lowther's inheritance?"

"Eh? A fortune out of hand--how?"

"The way I described before."

There was a slight scraping sound, such as a rat might have made in
burrowing behind the partition.

"What's that?" said Drayton, his face whitening, and his watchful eyes
glancing toward the door. "A key in the lock?" he whispered.

"Tut! isn't your own key on the inside?" said Hugh Ritson.

Drayton hung his head in shame at his idle fears.

"I know--I haven't forgot," he muttered, covering his discomfiture.

"It's a pity to stay here and be taken, when you might as easily be
safe," said Hugh.

"So it is," Drayton mumbled.

"And go through penal servitude for life, when another man might do it
for you," added Hugh, with a ghostly smile.

"I ain't axing you to say it over. What's that?" Drayton cowered down.
The bankrupt garret had dropped a cake of its rotten plaster. Hugh
Ritson moved not a muscle; only the sidelong glance told of his contempt
for the hulking creature's cowardice.

"The lawyer who has charge o