have been brought
up amidst purely native surroundings. There were one or two more obscure
allusions which led me to conclude that the boy's mother must have been
a white woman, and from what we saw of him there can be no doubt but
that he was white on one side."

"Nobody would have taken him to be aught but an Englishman," murmured
Evie.

"No," said Forrest. "I was intensely surprised when I discovered these
proofs of his identity and at first I thought they could not apply to
him, but before I come to the connecting link, let me mention one
curious thing in the letters, which may do something to explain the
curious influence which Mannering exerted over Mrs. Sutgrove."

"He hypnotized me, I am sure," declared Evie, decidedly.

"Very possibly," replied the detective. "In nearly every letter was to
be found an admonition to the effect--I cannot give you a verbatim
translation--that the writer hoped his old pupil would not forget that
to him was entrusted the secret power of Siva, which would, by
practice, enable him to mould all men to his will."

"If he had possessed that," I interrupted, "there would have been no
necessity for him to have practised piracy on the high-road."

"True," said Forrest. "But it is quite possible that Mrs. Sutgrove's
conjecture is correct, and that even at that early age Mannering had
learnt something about hypnotism from his native instructor, for I am
very certain that of these semi-occult sciences, the East has much more
precise knowledge than is realized by the Western world."

"Very likely," said my wife, shuddering slightly at the remembrance. "He
certainly had a most singular power over me."

"He probably increased his knowledge when he returned to his native
land, which, I gathered, must have taken place when he was about
seventeen. Then there is a break for nearly ten years in his history."

"I don't quite see how you connect Ram Krishna Roy with Mannering," I
interpolated.

"I'm coming to that," replied Forrest. "With these letters was another
in its original envelope addressed in the same hand to Julian Mannering
at San Francisco. It was the most interesting letter of the lot. It was
full of reproaches addressed to the dear pupil, who had cut himself off
from the asceticism of the East, and devoted himself to the gross
materialism of Western civilization. It concluded by the expression of
an intention to once more attempt to persuade him to return by a
personal appeal.