asked to be directed to him at the Post Office, Kingston, Jamaica, remained there till the paper grew faded.  The banker’s bill, which was wanted to pay the passage money, lay at the agents, but neither the captain nor his passenger of the “Bella” came to claim it.  Weeks and months rolled on; the annual allowance of one thousand a year, which was Roger’s by right, was paid into Glyn & Co.’s bank, but no draft upon it was ever more presented at their counters.  The diligent correspondent ceased to correspond.  At Lloyd’s the unfortunate vessel was finally written down upon the “Loss Book”—­the insurance was paid to the owners, and in time the “Bella” faded away from the memories of all but those who had lost friends or relatives in her.  Lady Tichborne was always full of hope that her son had been saved, and could never be brought to regard him as drowned; but we have now seen the last of the real Roger Tichborne, and our next business will be with the counterfeit.

At last, in the neighbourhood in which Sir James and his wife lived, it became notorious that the mother was prepared to receive any one kindly who professed to have news of her son, and naturally when the story once got wind there were many who tried to profit by her credulity.  Among other adventurers, a tramp in the dress of a sailor found his way to Tichborne, and, having poured into the willing ears of the poor mother a wild story about some of the survivors of the “Bella” being picked up off the coast of Brazil, and carried to Melbourne, was forthwith regaled and rewarded.  There is a freemasonry among beggars which sufficiently explains the fact, that very soon the appearance of ragged sailors in Tichborne Park became common.  Sailors with one leg, and sailors with one arm, loud-voiced, blustering seamen, and seamen whose troubles had subdued their tones to a plaintive key, all found their way to the back door of the great house.  Every one of them had heard something about the “Bella’s” crew being picked up; and could tell more on that subject than all the owners, or underwriters, or shipping registers in the world.  And poor Lady Tichborne believed, as is evidenced by a letter of hers written in 1857, only three years after the shipwreck, to a gentleman in Melbourne, imploring him to make inquiries for her son in that part of the world.  Sir James, however, though no less sorrowful, had no faith; and he made short work of tramping sailors who came to impose on the poor lady with their unsubstantial legends.  But Sir James died in 1862.  Shortly before this event his only surviving son Alfred had married Theresa, a daughter of the eleventh Lord Arundel of Wardour.  This, however, did not prevent the mother, in one of her crazy moods, taking a step calculated to induce some impostor to come forward and claim to be the rightful heir—­which was the insertion of an advertisement in the Times, offering a reward for the discovery of her eldest son, and giving a number of particulars with regard to his birth, parentage, age, date and place of shipwreck, name of vessel, and other matters.  She also incorporated in her advertisement the stories of the tramping sailors about his having been picked up and carried to Melbourne; and this mischievous advertisement was published in various languages, and doubtless copied in the South American and Australian newspapers.  This is the first step we find towards the formation of the imposture.