stice of your claim to advance any sum,
for your immediate wants."

"Thank you, sir! I am in no need of any advance. My mother's savings
amounted to five hundred pounds, of which I only drew fifty to buy my
outfit, when I went up to the Soudan. My pay sufficed for my wants
there, and I drew out the remaining four hundred and fifty pounds when
I left Cairo; so I am amply provided."

Gregory remained four days in London, obtaining suitable clothes. Then,
attended by Zaki, he took his place in the Great Western for Tavistock.
Zaki had already picked up a good deal of English, and Gregory talked
to him only in that language, on their way down from the battlefield;
so that he could now express himself in simple phrases.

Mr. Tufton had on the previous day written, at Gregory's request, to
his aunts; saying that the son of their brother had called upon him,
and given him proofs, which he considered incontestable, of his
identity and of the death of his father. He was the bearer of a letter
from his father to them, and proposed delivering it the next day, in
person. He agreed with Gregory that it was advisable to send down this
letter, as otherwise the ladies might doubt whether he was really what
he claimed to be, as his father's letter might very well have come into
the hands of a third person.

He went down by the night mail to Tavistock, put up at an hotel; and,
after breakfast, drove over to the Manor House, and sent in a card
which he had had printed in town. He was shown into a room where the
two ladies were waiting for him. They had been some four or five years
younger than his father, a fact of which he was not aware; and instead
of being elderly women, as he expected, he found, by their appearance,
they were scarcely entering middle age. They were evidently much
agitated.

"I have come down without waiting for an invitation," he said. "I was
anxious to deliver my father's letter to you, or at least a copy of it,
as soon as possible. It was written before his death, some eighteen
years ago, and was intended for my mother to give to you, should she
return to England. Its interest to you consists chiefly in the proof of
my father's affection for you, and that he felt he could rely on yours
for him. I may say that this is a copy, signed as correct by Mr.
Tufton. He could not give me the original, as it would be required as
an evidence of my father's identity, in the application he is about to
make for me to be decl