eason for leaving England was not, as many have
supposed, on account of his father's severity, but because of the
discovery of his wife's infidelity after all that he had sacrificed
for her. He brought her to Australia in the vain hope that, removed
from other influences--the influence of his own brother, in
particular,--she would yet prove true to him. Within the following
year, his son was born; but before that event he had fully learned
the character of the woman he had married, and he determined that no
child of his should be disgraced by any knowledge of its mother, or
contaminated by association with her. To my wife and myself he
confided his plans, and, as we had no children of our own, he pledged
us to the adoption of his child while yet unborn. An old and trusted
nurse in our family was also taken into the secret, but not the
physician employed on that occasion, as he was a man of no principle
and already in league with the false wife against her husband. When
the child was born, Mrs. Mainwaring was very ill and the babe received
comparatively little notice from the attendant physician. A dead
child, born but a few hours earlier, was therefore easily substituted
for the living child of Harold Mainwaring, while the latter was
secretly conveyed to my own home.

"A few weeks later, the child was privately christened in a small
church on the outskirts of Melbourne and the event duly recorded
upon the church records. He was given his father's name in full,
Harold Scott Mainwaring, but until his twenty-first birthday was
known among our acquaintances as Harry Scott, the same name by
which he has been known in your city while acting as private
secretary to Hugh Mainwaring."

"Are you familiar with the letter written by Harold Mainwaring to
his son?"

"Perfectly so; he gave it into my keeping on the day of the
christening, to be given to his son when he should have reached
his majority, if he himself had not, before that time, claimed
him as his child."

"You can then vouch for its genuineness?"

"I can."

"How long a time elapsed between the birth of this child and the
death of Harold Mainwaring, the father?"

"About five years. He left his wife soon after the birth of this
child and spent the greater part of his time at the mines. He
finally decided to go to the gold fields of Africa, and a few
months after his departure, we received tidings of the wreck of
the vessel in which he sailed, with the