ives. Can a man explain heredity? Here"--and he threw a packet of
papers on the writing-desk--"are the proofs of my identity. It is not long
ago, only one hundred and fifty years, since David Hume was robbed of his
birthright, and what is such a period to the old families of England and
Japan? There are men living in Japan to-day who saw his son in the flesh.
I am his lawful descendant. I came to England and resolved to be an
Englishman. But I needed money. Do you remember our motto, 'A new field
gives a small crop'? The first Japanese Hume did not prosper. He was a
good fighter, but he saved no yen. So I applied to my family. I came here
on the New Year's Eve, and Sir Alan Hume-Frazer saw me walking up the
avenue. He stepped out through that window to meet me. He was surprised at
my appearance, and thought I was his cousin Robert, whom he had not seen
for years."

At this remarkable statement the four listeners chiefly concerned looked
wonderingly at each other. The main incidents of the family feud were
repeating themselves in a ghostly manner.

Ooma paid no heed to their amazement. He staggered unsteadily to a chair
and sank into it limply. It was the chair which David Hume occupied when
he slept, and dreamed. Not even Winter saw cause for suspicion in the act.
Ooma was dying. His yellow skin was now green. His lips were white. His
whole frame was sinking. At this phase he became a Japanese, and lost all
likeness to the Frazers.

He continued, with an odd cackle:

"I kept up the error. I demanded money as my right, and from his words I
gathered that the Frazers had been at their old tricks and defrauded
another relative."

Robert started.

"Do you hear?" he murmured to Brett. "That accounts for Alan's strange
reception of me the same day."

Brett held up a warning hand. Ooma was still talking.

"I taunted him with thriving on the plunder of his own people. That made
him furious. He raved about the world being in league against him. The
only relative he loved, one who was more than brother, had stolen the
woman he wished to marry; his sister was a living lie; his cousin a
blackmailer. I laughed. 'Do you disown your sister, then?' I asked. He
took from his breast-pocket some papers--you will find them there, on the
table--and told me, in great anger, that he possessed proof that she was
not his sister. I was cooler than he, and saw the value of this admission
I pretended to go away, but hid among the trees and