ne can tell.'

Monks drew his breath yet more freely, and looked round with a smile of
triumph.

'When your brother,' said Mr. Brownlow, drawing nearer to the other's
chair, 'When your brother: a feeble, ragged, neglected child: was
cast in my way by a stronger hand than chance, and rescued by me from a
life of vice and infamy--'

'What?' cried Monks.

'By me,' said Mr. Brownlow. 'I told you I should interest you before
long. I say by me--I see that your cunning associate suppressed my
name, although for ought he knew, it would be quite strange to your
ears. When he was rescued by me, then, and lay recovering from
sickness in my house, his strong resemblance to this picture I have
spoken of, struck me with astonishment. Even when I first saw him in
all his dirt and misery, there was a lingering expression in his face
that came upon me like a glimpse of some old friend flashing on one in
a vivid dream. I need not tell you he was snared away before I knew
his history--'

'Why not?' asked Monks hastily.

'Because you know it well.'

'I!'

'Denial to me is vain,' replied Mr. Brownlow. 'I shall show you that I
know more than that.'

'You--you--can't prove anything against me,' stammered Monks. 'I defy
you to do it!'

'We shall see,' returned the old gentleman with a searching glance. 'I
lost the boy, and no efforts of mine could recover him. Your mother
being dead, I knew that you alone could solve the mystery if anybody
could, and as when I had last heard of you you were on your own estate
in the West Indies--whither, as you well know, you retired upon your
mother's death to escape the consequences of vicious courses here--I
made the voyage. You had left it, months before, and were supposed to
be in London, but no one could tell where. I returned. Your agents
had no clue to your residence. You came and went, they said, as
strangely as you had ever done: sometimes for days together and
sometimes not for months: keeping to all appearance the same low
haunts and mingling with the same infamous herd who had been your
associates when a fierce ungovernable boy. I wearied them with new
applications. I paced the streets by night and day, but until two
hours ago, all my efforts were fruitless, and I never saw you for an
instant.'

'And now you do see me,' said Monks, rising boldly, 'what then? Fraud
and robbery are high-sounding words--justified, you think, by a fancied
resemblance in some young i