o prefer a claim to your father's estate, and that
your lawyer had been advising a compromise with him."

"But a compromise is a sort of admission that the claimant was not an
impostor--that he had his rights!"

"There are rights, and rights! There are demands, too, that it is
often better to conciliate than to defy--even though defiance would be
successful."

"And how is it that I never heard of this before?" burst he out,
indignantly. "Has a man the right to treat his son in this fashion? to
bring him up in the unbroken security of succeeding to an inheritance
that the law may decide he has no title to?"

"I think that is natural enough. Your father evidently did not
recognize this man's right, and felt there was no need to impart the
matter to his family."

"But why should my father be the judge in his own cause?"

L'Estrange smiled faintly: the line in the Colonel's letter, in which he
spoke of his son's sensitiveness, occurred to him at once.

"I see how you treat my question," said Augustus. "It reminds you of the
character my father gave me. What do you say then to that passage about
the registry? Why, if we be clean-handed in this business, do we want to
make short work of all records?"

"I simply say I can make nothing of it."

"Is it possible, think you, that Marion knows this story?"

"I think it by no means unlikely."

"It would account for much that has often puzzled me," said Augustus,
musing as he spoke. "A certain self-assertion that she has, and a habit,
too, of separating her own interests from those of the rest of us,
as though speculating on a time when she should walk alone. Have you
remarked that?"

"_I_ I," said L'Estrange, smiling, "remarked nothing! there is not a
less observant fellow breathing."

"If it were not for those words about the parish registry, George,"
said the other, in a grave tone, "I 'd carry a light heart about all
this; I'd take my father's version of this fellow, whoever he is, and
believe him to be an impostor; but I don't like the notion of foul play,
and it does mean foul play."

L'Estrange was silent, and for some minutes neither spoke.

"When my father," said Augustus--and there was a tone of bitterness now
in his voice--"when my father drew that comparison between himself and
his sons, he may have been flattering his superior intellect at the
expense of some other quality."

Another and a longer pause succeeded.

At last L'Estrange spoke:--

"I h