for the time
being, "unless you've disgraced yourself, you can't hurt much by saying.
You say you're the Squire's son; this gentleman--I didn't catch your
name, sir?--Armstrong?--Mr Armstrong says he's not as sure as you are.
Seems to me, if you tell one thing, you may as well tell another. It's
all one story, and if it's true, it's a good one."

Mr Ratman did not like the turn affairs were taking. If he refused to
reply to the questions put to him, he was aware that he was damaging his
own claim. If he answered, how was he to know if the risk was not even
greater? And yet, what more was Armstrong likely to know about the lost
son than he himself? He might as well go through with it. So he
replied, sullenly--

"I left home a year before my mother died. He can get the date of that
from the tombstone, if he wants it."

"Thanks; I'll look at it," said the tutor with aggravating cheerfulness.
"You went up to London, didn't you?"

"I've told you so, and that I lived there with a man called Fastnet."

"And then you went abroad, I think you said?"

"Yes; to India."

"Just so; that's where you died, is it not? You stayed in London long
enough to go to the dogs, I understood you to say?"

"That didn't take long. I spent all my money in six months, and then
enlisted," said Ratman, feeling fairly launched by this time.

"Quite so. And you died, I believe, in India?"

"I was supposed to have died in a skirmish; and they sent news home that
I had. I never corrected it."

"Whereabouts was the skirmish, if it's a fair question?"

"On the frontier. I forget the name."

"That's unfortunate. By the way, to go back to London, do you recollect
where Mr Fastnet lived? I should like to call on him."

"You won't find him; he died before I went abroad--drank himself to
death."

"I'm sorry to hear that. And you enlisted under your present name of
Ratman, of course?"

"My present name is Ingleton. If I called myself Ratman, that was
because I didn't want my father to hear of me. I never told any one my
real name."

"Seems to me," said the Mayor, "it's odd how your medical adviser on the
field of battle found out where to write home to say you were dead."

"It is still more odd, sir," said the tutor, fixing the claimant with
his glass, "that this Mr Fastnet (who, you will be glad to hear, has
also come to life again, was still in good health when my ward saw him a
few weeks ago) retains a vivid recollection