was, it struck the consul dimly, as
through fog and darkness, that the features of the young man were not
unfamiliar, and indeed had looked out upon him dimly and vaguely at
various times, from various historic canvases. It was the face of
complacent fatuity, incompetency, and inconstancy, which had dragged
down strength, competency, and constancy to its own idiotic fate and
levels,--a face for whose weaknesses valor and beauty had not only
sacrificed themselves, but made things equally unpleasant to a great
many minor virtues. Nevertheless, the consul, with an amused sense of
its ridiculous incongruity to the grim Scottish Sabbath procession in
the street, and the fog-bound volumes of admiralty law in the room,
smiled affably.

"Of course our young friend has no desire to test the magic of his name
here, in these degenerate days."

"No," said Custer complacently; "though between you and me, old man,
there's always no tellin' what might turn up over in this yer monarchy.
Things of course are different over our way. But jest now Malcolm will
be satisfied to take the title and property to which he's rightful
heir."

The consul's face fell. Alas! it was only the old, old story. Its
endless repetitions and variations had been familiar to him even in his
youth and in his own land. "Ef that man had his rights," had once been
pointed out to him in a wild Western camp, "he'd be now sittin' in
scarlet on the right of the Queen of England!" The gentleman who was
indicated in this apocalyptical vision, it appeared, simply bore a
singular likeness to a reigning Hanoverian family, which for some
unexplained reason he had contented himself with bearing with fortitude
and patience. But it was in his official capacity that the consul's
experience had been the most trying. At times it had seemed to him that
much of the real property and peerage of Great Britain was the inherited
right of penniless American republicans who had hitherto refrained
from presenting their legal claims, and that the habitual first duty of
generations of British noblemen on coming into their estates and titles
was to ship their heirs and next of kin to America, and then forget all
about them. He had listened patiently to claims to positions more
or less exalted,--claims often presented with ingenuous sophistry or
pathetic simplicity, prosecuted with great good humor, and abandoned
with invincible cheerfulness; but they seldom culminated more seriously
than