“No, this one doesn’t seem to cringe much.”

“Cringe—­why, he doesn’t know the meaning of the word.  Hatchments!  To commemorate that sniveling tramp and his, fraternal duplicate.  And he is going to send me the remains.  The late Claimant was a fool, but plainly this new one’s a maniac.  What a name!  Mulberry Sellers—­there’s music for you, Simon Lathers—­Mulberry Sellers—­Mulberry Sellers—­Simon Lathers.  Sounds like machinery working and churning.  Simon Lathers, Mulberry Sel—­Are you going?”

“If I have your leave, father.”

The old gentleman stood musing some time, after his son was gone.  This was his thought: 

“He is a good boy, and lovable.  Let him take his own course—­as it would profit nothing to oppose him—­make things worse, in fact.  My arguments and his aunt’s persuasions have failed; let us see what America can do for us.  Let us see what equality and hard-times can effect for the mental health of a brain-sick young British lord.  Going to renounce his lordship and be a man!  Yas!”

CHAPTER II.

Colonel Mulberry Sellers—­this was some days before he wrote his letter to Lord Rossmore—­was seated in his “library,” which was also his “drawing-room” and was also his “picture gallery” and likewise his “work-shop.”  Sometimes he called it by one of these names, sometimes by another, according to occasion and circumstance.  He was constructing what seemed to be some kind of a frail mechanical toy; and was apparently very much interested in his work.  He was a white-headed man, now, but otherwise he was as young, alert, buoyant, visionary and enterprising as ever.  His loving old wife sat near by, contentedly knitting and thinking, with a cat asleep in her lap.  The room was large, light, and had a comfortable look, in fact a home-like look, though the furniture was of a humble sort and not over abundant, and the knickknacks and things that go to adorn a living-room not plenty and not costly.  But there were natural flowers, and there was an abstract and unclassifiable something about the place which betrayed the presence in the house of somebody with a happy taste and an effective touch.

Even the deadly chromos on the walls were somehow without offence; in fact they seemed to belong there and to add an attraction to the room —­a fascination, anyway; for whoever got his eye on one of them was like to gaze and suffer till he died—­you have seen that kind of pictures.  Some of these terrors were landscapes, some libeled the sea, some were ostensible portraits, all were crimes.  All the portraits were recognizable as dead Americans of distinction, and yet, through labeling added, by a daring hand, they were all doing duty here as “Earls of Rossmore.”  The newest one had left the works as Andrew Jackson, but was doing its best now, as “Simon Lathers Lord Rossmore, Present Earl.”  On one wall was a cheap old railroad