ther negligently, throwing up his hands
and letting them fall as they would. "What would you have? I am so
obscurely born, that how can I say? I was very young, and all the rest
of the family were men and women, and my so-called parents were old.
Anything is possible of a case like that."

"Did you ever doubt--"

"I told you once, I doubt the marriage of those two," he replied,
throwing up his hands again, as if he were throwing the unprofitable
subject away. "But here I am in Creation. _I_ come of no fine family.
What does it matter?"

"At least you are Swiss," said Vendale, after following him with his eyes
to and fro.

"How do I know?" he retorted abruptly, and stopping to look back over his
shoulder. "I say to you, at least you are English. How do you know?"

"By what I have been told from infancy."

"Ah! I know of myself that way."

"And," added Vendale, pursuing the thought that he could not drive back,
"by my earliest recollections."

"I also. I know of myself that way--if that way satisfies."

"Does it not satisfy you?"

"It must. There is nothing like 'it must' in this little world. It
must. Two short words those, but stronger than long proof or reasoning."

"You and poor Wilding were born in the same year. You were nearly of an
age," said Vendale, again thoughtfully looking after him as he resumed
his pacing up and down.

"Yes. Very nearly."

Could Obenreizer be the missing man? In the unknown associations of
things, was there a subtler meaning than he himself thought, in that
theory so often on his lips about the smallness of the world? Had the
Swiss letter presenting him followed so close on Mrs. Goldstraw's
revelation concerning the infant who had been taken away to Switzerland,
because he was that infant grown a man? In a world where so many depths
lie unsounded, it might be. The chances, or the laws--call them
either--that had wrought out the revival of Vendale's own acquaintance
with Obenreizer, and had ripened it into intimacy, and had brought them
here together this present winter night, were hardly less curious; while
read by such a light, they were seen to cohere towards the furtherance of
a continuous and an intelligible purpose.

Vendale's awakened thoughts ran high while his eyes musingly followed
Obenreizer pacing up and down the room, the river ever running to the
tune: "Where shall I rob him, if I can? Where shall I murder him, if I
must?" The secret of his