AN UNEXPECTED DISCOVEKY 365 father became the next Earl, and has been advertised for in vain ever since. As, unhappily, your father is dead also, you are unquestionably the Marquis of Langdale.”

Gregory looked round with a bewildered air. The news was so absolutely unexpected that he could hardly take it in.

“ It seems impossible,” he said at last.

‘It is not only impossible, but a fact,” the Colonel said. There is nothing very surprising in it. There were only two lives between your father and the peerage, and as one was that of an old man, the second of a man certainly in the prime of life but unmarried, why, the Jews would have lent money on the chance. I fancy your uncle was a somewhat extravagant man. I remember he kept a lot of racehorses and so on, but he could not have dipped very seriously into the property. At any rate there will be fourteen years’ accumulations, which will put matters straight. I hope you have got papers that will prove you are your father’s son, and that he was brother of the late Earl.”

“I think there can be no difficulty about that,” Gregory said. “ I have letters from both my parents, a copy of their marriage certificate, and of the registers of my birth and baptism. There are some persons in Cairo who knew my father, and a good many who knew my mother.”

“ Then I should say that it would be quite safe sailing.

I don’t know, Lewis, whether you are not entitled to that five hundred pounds.”

“ I am afraid not,” the other laughed. Mr. Hartley, or rather, I should say, the Earl, would have discovered it himself. I only recognized the name, which plenty of people would have done as soon as they saw it in despatches.”

“ It will be a great disappointment to someone,” Gregory said, if they have been for fourteen years expecting to come in for this.”

‘You need not fret about that,” another officer said.

The next heir is a distant cousin. He has been trying over