tainment of a new and unsuspected half brother--sinister,
hey?--must present difficulties to the maiden mind.

"I made none, of course. I saw their solicitor next day and helped
straighten out his papers for him. After which I departed.

"The only thing I took away was a bit of family history."

Such was his blunt way of putting it; yet I was not so dull as to miss a
glimpse of what it meant, the sacrifice he had made in his bitter
grievance; the true and knightly spirit he must have shown toward those
three innocent gentlewomen, so lightly and whimsically touched in his
narrative.

At this point he paused and reached into the side pocket of his dinner
jacket.

"Have you seen the guidebook they sell about the streets here," he
asked--"the English Guide to Madeira?"

I blinked again at the abrupt transition, but his hand came away empty.

"Never mind," he resumed. "I'll show you something presently to
surprise you. Meanwhile hark to the family record:

"It seems my people had inhabited their corner of Yorkshire time out of
mind. That's a common thing enough, a rural line rooted deep in the
soil. But, what isn't so common, they've managed somehow to keep the
precious old ancestral name alive and going--from the Ark, perhaps.
Yeoman, franklin and squire, as they say, there is always a Robert
Matcham above ground somewhere. Robert Matcham, the descendant of
uncounted Robert Matchams--d'ye see? It was my father's name, and when
he made his break to Australia the tradition was too strong for him: he
never changed it--which explains how the solicitor came to trace him at
last. You'd hardly call it a fortunate heirloom; but it's the only one
I've got--my sole inheritance--for Robert Matcham happens to be my name
as well."

He seemed to mean it as a sort of introduction, in spite of the
discomfortable irony of his tone.

"It's now three months, as I tell you, since Nemesis or Belial or
coincidence--whatever you like--began to play this scurvy joke on me. It
hasn't quit yet. To what end, hey? What's it about? What's it damn well
for? Perhaps that sounds like whining. Well, it's only whining for a
chance to hit back at something or somebody. Wait till you've been
caught up by the scruff and cuffed blind, as I've been, and no place to
get your teeth in.... Listen now:

"My one idea was to get a part of what I'd lost, money enough to buy a
little place of my own away there in the bush, the only thing I cared
about or k