ck."

"Yes," was the answer, "but a man can dye his hair, can he not? look at
his blue eyes and his eyelashes?"

My father was doubting whether he ought not to again deny his identity
out of loyalty to the Mayor and Yram, when George's next brother said,
"Pay no attention to them, but step out as fast as you can." This
settled the matter, and in a few minutes they were at the Mayor's, where
the young men took him into the study; the elder said with a smile, "We
should like to stay and talk to you, but my mother said we were not to do
so." Whereon they left him much to his regret, but he gathered rightly
that they had not been officially told who he was, and were to be left to
think what they liked, at any rate for the present.

In a few minutes the Mayor entered, and going straight up to my father
shook him cordially by the hand.

"I have brought you this morning's paper," said he. "You will find a
full report of Professor Hanky's sermon, and of the speeches at last
night's banquet. You see they pass over your little interruption with
hardly a word, but I dare say they will have made up their minds about it
all by Thursday's issue."

He laughed as he produced the paper--which my father brought home with
him, and without which I should not have been able to report Hanky's
sermon as fully as I have done. But my father could not let things pass
over thus lightly.

"I thank you," he said, "but I have much more to thank you for, and know
not how to do it."

"Can you not trust me to take everything as said?"

"Yes, but I cannot trust myself not to be haunted if I do not say--or at
any rate try to say--some part of what I ought to say."

"Very well; then I will say something myself. I have a small joke, the
only one I ever made, which I inflict periodically upon my wife. You,
and I suppose George, are the only two other people in the world to whom
it can ever be told; let me see, then, if I cannot break the ice with it.
It is this. Some men have twin sons; George in this topsy turvey world
of ours has twin fathers--you by luck, and me by cunning. I see you
smile; give me your hand."

My father took the Mayor's hand between both his own. "Had I been in
your place," he said, "I should be glad to hope that I might have done as
you did."

"And I," said the Mayor, more readily than might have been expected of
him, "fear that if I had been in yours--I should have made it the proper
thing for you to do. There