“There is one more thing,” I went on; “you say the mother of him you seek was a great lady.  Well, I saw the body of the mother of the boy who was found, and it was that of a common person very roughly clad with coarse underclothes and hands hard with labour, on which there was but one ring, and that of silver.  Here it is,” and going to a drawer I took from it a common silver ring which I once bought from a pedlar because he worried me into it.  “Lastly, gentlemen, the father of our lad was no lord, unless in your country it is the custom of lords to herd sheep, for the boy told me that in his own land his father was a shepherd, and that he was travelling to some distant English colony to follow his trade.  That is all I have to say about it, though I am sorry that the lad is not here to tell it you himself.”

When he had heard this statement of mine, which I made in a cold and indifferent voice, the young lord, Ralph’s cousin, rose and stretched himself, smiling happily.

“Well,” he said, “there is the end of a very bad nightmare, and I am glad enough that we came here and found out the truth, for had we not done so I should never have been happy in my mind.”

“Yes,” answered the lawyer, the interpreter rendering their words all the while, “the Vrouw Botmar’s evidence is conclusive, though I shall put her statement in writing and ask her to sign it.  There is only one thing, and that is the strange resemblance of the names,” and he glanced at him with his quick eyes.

“There are many Mackenzies in Scotland,” answered Lord Glenthirsk, “and I have no doubt that this poor fellow was a shepherd emigrating with his wife and child to Australia or somewhere.”  Then he yawned and added, “I am going outside to get some air before I sleep.  Perhaps you will draw up the paper for the good lady to sign.”

“Certainly, my lord,” answered the lawyer, and the young man went away quite convinced.

After he had gone the lawyer produced pen and ink and wrote out the statement, putting in it all the lies that I had told, and copying the extract from the fly-leaf of the Bible.  When he had done the interpreter translated it to me, and then it was that the lawyer told me about the last wishes of the dying lord, and how it would have cost him ten thousand pounds and much business also had the tale proved true.  Now at last he gave me the paper to sign.  Besides the candles on the table, which being of mutton fat had burnt out, there was a lamp fed with whale’s oil, but this also was dying, the oil being exhausted, so that its flame, which had sunk low, jumped from time to time with a little noise, giving out a blue light.  In that unholy blue light, which turned our faces ghastly pale, the lawyer and I looked at each other as I sat before him, the pen in my hand, and in his eyes I read that he was certain that I was about to sign to a wicked lie, and in mine he read that I knew it to be a lie.