ink of saying 'No' to
you."

"Ah, mother, you are prejudiced! To you I am a sort of swan that has come
out of a duck's egg."

They chatted for some time, and then Will said:

"Are you quite sure, John, that the bundle the clergyman handed over to me
contained every single thing my father left behind him?"

"Well, now I think of it, Will, there is something else. I never
remembered it at the time, but when my old woman was sweeping a cobweb off
the rafters the other day she said: 'Why, here is Will's father's fiddle',
and, sure enough, there it was. It had been up there from the day you came
into the house, and if we noticed it none of us ever gave it a thought."

"I remember it now," Will exclaimed. "When I was a young boy I used to
think I should like to learn to play on it, and I spoke to Miss Warden
about it. But she said I had better stick to my lessons, and then as I
grew up I could learn it if I still had a fancy to do so."

He got on to a chair, and took it from the rafter on which it had so long
lain. Then he carefully wiped the dust off it.

"It looks a very old thing, but that makes no difference in its value to
me. I don't see in the least how this can be any clue whatever to my
father's identity. Still, I will take it away with me and show it to my
lawyer, who is endeavouring to trace for me who my father was."

"And do you think that he will succeed, Will?"

"I rather believe he will. At any rate he has found a gentleman, a
baronet, who has the same name and bears the same coat of arms as is on
the seal which was in my father's bundle. We are trying now to trace how
my father came down here, and where he lived before he started. You see I
must get as clear a story as I can before I go to see this gentleman.
Mind, I don't want anything from him. He may be as rich as a lord for
anything I care, and may refuse to have anything to do with me, but I want
to find out to what family I really belong."

"He must be a bad lot," John said, "to allow your father to tramp about
the country with a fiddle."

"I would not say that," Will said; "there are always two sides to a story,
and we know nothing of my father's reasons for leaving home. It may have
been his fault more than his father's, so until I know the rights and
wrongs of the case I will form no judgment whatever."

"That is right, my boy," the old woman said. "I have noticed that when a
boy runs away from home and goes to sea it is as often his fau