ce more hard in his face.

"Yes," he said, with a repetition of the bitter laugh. "You have
brought a poor devil back into the world who has no business there. Do I
astonish you? Well, I have a fancy of my own for telling you what men in
my situation generally keep a secret. I have no name and no father. The
merciful law of society tells me I am nobody's son! Ask your father if
he will be my father too, and help me on in life with the family name."

Arthur looked at me more puzzled than ever.

I signed to him to say nothing, and then laid my fingers again on the
man's wrist. No. In spite of the extraordinary speech that he had just
made, he was not, as I had been disposed to suspect, beginning to get
light-headed. His pulse, by this time, had fallen back to a quiet,
slow beat, and his skin was moist and cool. Not a symptom of fever or
agitation about him.

Finding that neither of us answered him, he turned to me, and began
talking of the extraordinary nature of his case, and asking my advice
about the future course of medical treatment to which he ought to
subject himself. I said the matter required careful thinking over, and
suggested that I should send him a prescription a little later. He told
me to write it at once, as he would most likely be leaving Doncaster in
the morning before I was up. It was quite useless to represent to him
the folly and danger of such a proceeding as this. He heard me politely
and patiently, but held to his resolution, without offering any reasons
or explanations, and repeated to me that, if I wished to give him a
chance of seeing my prescription, I must write it at once.

Hearing this, Arthur volunteered the loan of a traveling writing-case,
which he said he had with him, and, bringing it to the bed, shook the
note-paper out of the pocket of the case forthwith in his usual careless
way. With the paper there fell out on the counterpane of the bed a
small packet of sticking-plaster, and a little water-color drawing of a
landscape.

The medical student took up the drawing and looked at it. His eye fell
on some initials neatly written in cipher in one corner. He started
and trembled; his pale face grew whiter than over; his wild black eyes
turned on Arthur, and looked through and through him.

"A pretty drawing," he said, in a remarkably quiet tone of voice.

"Ah! and done by such a pretty girl," said Arthur. "Oh, such a pretty
girl! I wish it was not a landscape--I wish it was a portr