THE RUINED HEIR.

Where, meanwhile, was the “mad” duke with his loyal son?

Various reports had been circulated concerning them, so long as they had been remembered.  Some had said that they had emigrated to Australia; others that they had gone to Canada; others again that they were living on the Continent.  All agreed that wherever they were, they must be in great destitution.

But now, three years had passed since the fall of Lone and the disappearance of the ruined ducal family, and they were very nearly forgotten.

Meanwhile where were they then?

They were hidden in the great wilderness of London.

On leaving Lone, the stricken duke, crushed equally under domestic affliction and financial ruin, and failing both in mind and body, started for London, tenderly escorted by his son.

It was the last extravagance of the young marquis to engage a whole compartment in a first-class carriage on the Great Northern Railway train, that the fallen and humbled duke might travel comfortably and privately without being subjected to annoyance by the gaze of the curious, or comments of the thoughtless.

On reaching London they went first to an obscure but respectable inn in a borough, where they remained unknown for a few days, while the marquis sought for lodgings which should combine privacy, decency and cheapness, in some densely-populated, unfashionable quarter of the city, where their identity would be lost in the crowd, and where they would never by any chance meet any one whom they had ever met before.

They found such a refuge at length, in a lodging-house kept by the widow of a curate in Catharine street, Strand.

Here the ruined duke and marquis dropped their titles, and lived only under their baptismal name and family names.

Here Archibald-Alexander-John Scott, Duke of Hereward and Marquis of Arondelle in the Peerage of England, and Baron Lone, of Lone, in the Peerage of Scotland, was known only as old Mr. Scott.

And his son Archibald-Alexander-John Scott, by courtesy Marquis of Arondelle, was known only as young Mr. John Scott.

Now as there were probably some thousands of “Scotts,” and among them, some hundreds of “John Scotts,” in all ranks of life, from the old landed proprietor with his town-house in Belgravia, to the poor coster-monger with his donkey-cart in Covent Garden, in this great city of London, there was little danger that the real rank of these ruined noblemen should be suspected, and no possibility that they should be recognized and identified.  They were as completely lost to their old world as though they had been hidden in the Australian bush or New Zealand forests.

Here as Mr. Scott and Mr. John Scott, they lived three years.

The old duke, overwhelmed by his family calamity, gradually sank deeper and deeper into mental and bodily imbecility.

Here the young marquis picked up a scanty living for himself and father by contributing short articles to the columns of the National Liberator, the great organ of the Reform Party.