he's got brains enough and backing enough to
carry through whatever he undertakes."

"Say! I don't know as I exactly catch your meaning; but that's one
thing I wanted to ask you. What do you think of that young man,
anyway? I can't make him out."

"I noticed that you had not assigned him any place in that theory
of yours."

"No; he's been a mystery to me, a perfect mystery; but this evening
a new idea has occurred to me, and I would like your judgment on it.
Has he ever reminded you of any one? That is, can you recall any
one whom he resembles?"

"Well, I should say there was a marked resemblance. I've often
wondered where your eyes were that you had not seen it."

"You have noticed it, then? Well, so have I; but it has puzzled me,
for, though the look was familiar, I was unable to recall whose it
was until to-night. Now that I have recalled it, that, taken in
connection with some other things I have observed, has led me to
wonder whether it were possible that he is a son of Hugh
Mainwaring's, of whose existence no one in this country has ever
known."

"Hugh Mainwaring! I don't understand you."

"Why, you just acknowledged you had noticed the resemblance between
them!"

"I beg your pardon; but you must recollect that I have never seen
Hugh Mainwaring living, and have little idea how he looked."

"By George! that's a fact. Well, then, who in the dickens do you
think he resembles?"

The coachman's step was heard at that instant on the stairs, and
Merrick's reply was necessarily brief.

"Laying aside expression, take feature for feature, and you have
the face of Mrs. LaGrange."

CHAPTER XIV

THE EXIT OF SCOTT, THE SECRETARY

One of the first duties which the secretary was called upon to
perform, during his brief stay at Fair Oaks, was to make a copy of
the lost will. He still retained in his possession the stenographic
notes of the original document as it had been dictated by Hugh
Mainwaring on that last morning of his life, and it was but the
work of an hour or two to again transcribe them in his clear
chirography.

Engaged in this work, he was seated at the large desk in the
tower-room, which had that morning been opened for use for the first
time since the death of its owner. He wrote rapidly, and the
document was nearly completed when Mr. Whitney and Ralph Mainwaring
together entered the adjoining room.

"Egad!" he heard the latter exclaim, angrily, "if that blasted
scoundr