r. This is a statement of my lawyer's clerk, who interviewed the
woman in whose house my father and mother lived, and my mother died."

The baronet took it and read it in silence.

"I can produce also," Will went on, as the old man laid it down with a
sigh, "the evidence of the lady who educated me, and to whom I owe all the
good fortune that has befallen me. The old fisherman and his wife who
brought me up are still alive, though very old. I have means of obtaining
abundant evidence from my shipmates in the various vessels in which I have
sailed that I am the boy who left that village at the age of fifteen, and
entered as a ship's boy in one of His Majesty's vessels."

"And you are now--?" the baronet asked.

"I am now twenty-three, sir."

"And a captain?"

"That is so, sir. I was made a midshipman before I had been three months
on board, partly because I saved the first lieutenant's life, and partly
because I understood enough mathematics to take an observation. Of course
I served my time as a midshipman, and a year after passing I was made a
second lieutenant. By the death of my first lieutenant at the battle of
St. Vincent I succeeded to his post, and obtained the rank of captain for
my share in the battle of Camperdown. I received post rank the other day
when, in command of the _Ethalion_, I brought the _Bellone_, a frigate of
Admiral Bompart's fleet, a prize to Portsmouth."

"Well, sir, your career has indeed been creditable and successful, and I
am proud to acknowledge, as my grandson and heir to my title, a young
gentleman who has so greatly distinguished himself. For I do acknowledge
you. The proofs you have given me leave no doubt in my mind whatever that
you are the son of my second son. You were, of course, too young to
remember whether he ever spoke to you of me."

"Yes, sir. I was but five at the time of his death, and have but a very
faint recollection of him."

"Of course, of course," the baronet said; "it was a sad affair. Perhaps I
was to blame to some extent, though I have never thought so. Your father
was, as doubtless you know, a second son. Although somewhat eccentric in
disposition, and given to fits of passion, I had no serious occasion to
complain of him until he went up to Oxford. There he got into a wild and
dissipated set, and became the wildest and most dissipated among them. His
great talent for music was his bane. He was continually asked out. After
being two years up there, and c