“And no one except the doctor has ever known that it was Willy?”

“One more, my lord:  Mirrable.  We told her at once.  I have had to hear all sorts of cruel things said of him,” continued Mrs. Gum.  “That he thieved and poached, and did I know not what; and we could only encourage the fancy, for it put people off the truth as to how he really lived.”

“Amidst other things, they said, I believe, that he was out with the poachers the night my brother George was shot!”

“And that night, my lord, he sat over this kitchen fire, and never stirred from it.  He was ill:  it was rheumatism, caught in Australia, that took such a hold upon him; and I had him here by the fire till near daylight in the morning, so as to keep him out of the damp shed.  What with fearing one thing and another, I grew into a state of perpetual terror.”

“Then you will not have him in here now,” said Lord Hartledon, rising.

“I cannot,” she said, her tears falling silently.

“Well, Mrs. Gum, I came in just to say a word of true sympathy.  You have it heartily, and my services also, if necessary.  Tell Jabez so.”

He quitted the house by the front-door, as if he had been honouring the clerk’s wife with a morning-call, should any curious person happen to be passing, and went across through the snow to the surgeon’s.  Mr. Hillary, an old bachelor, was at his early dinner, and Lord Hartledon sat down and talked to him.

“It’s only rump steak; but few cooks can beat mine, and it’s very good.  Won’t your lordship take a mouthful by way of luncheon?”

“My curiosity is too strong for luncheon just now,” said Val.  “I have come over to know the rights and wrongs of this story.  What has Willy Gum been doing in the past years that it cannot be told?”

“I am not sure that it would be safe to say while he’s living.”

“Not safe! with me!  Was it safe with you?”

“But I don’t consider myself obliged to give up to justice any poor criminal who comes in my way,” said the surgeon; and Val felt a little vexed, although he saw that he was joking.

“Come, Hillary!”

“Well, then, Willy Gum was coming home in the Morning Star; and a mutiny broke out—­mutiny and murder, and everything else that’s bad; and one George Gordon was the ringleader.”

“Yes.  Well?”

“Willy Gum was George Gordon.”

“What!” exclaimed Hartledon, not knowing how to accept the words.  “How could he be George Gordon?”

“Because the real George Gordon never sailed at all; and this fellow Gum went on board in his name, calling himself Gordon.”