easily to be moved. Yet
Brooks fancied that the long white fingers were trembling, and that the
strange quiet of his features was one of intense self-repression. His
tone when he spoke again, however, was clear, and almost indifferent.

"I feel," he said, "that it would have been only decently courteous of
me to have sought you out before, although I have, as you see, nothing
whatever to add to the communications I sent you. But I have not been a
very long time in England, and I have a very evil habit of putting off
things concerning which there is no urgency. I called at Ascough's, and
learned that you were in practice in Medchester. I am now living for a
short time not far from here, and reading of the election, I drove in
to-night to attend one of the meetings--I scarcely cared which. I heard
your name, saw you on the platform, and called here, hoping to find
you."

"It was very kind," Brooks said.

He felt curiously tongue-tied. This sudden upheaval of a past which he
had never properly understood affected him strangely.

"I gathered from Mr. Ascough that you were left sufficient means to pay
for your education, and also to start you in life," his visitor
continued. "Yours is considered to be an overcrowded profession, but I
am glad to understand that you seem likely to make your way."

Brooks thanked him absently.

"From your position on the platform to-night I gather that you are a
politician?"

"Scarcely that," Brooks answered. "I was fortunate enough to be
appointed agent to Mr. Henslow owing to the illness of another man. It
will help me in my profession."

The visitor rose to his feet. He stood with his hands behind him,
looking at the younger man. And Brooks suddenly remembered that he did
not even know his name.

"You will forgive me," he said, also rising, "if I have seemed a little
dazed. I am very grateful to you for coming. I have always wanted more
than anything in the world to meet some one who saw my father after he
left England. There is so much which even now seems mysterious with
regard to his disappearance from the world."

"I fear that you will never discover more than you have done from me,"
was the quiet reply. "Your father had been living for years in profound
solitude when I found him. Frankly, I considered from the first that
his mind was unhinged. Therein I fancy lies the whole explanation of
his silence and his voluntary disappearance. I am assuming, of course,
that there was