plaintively declaring that he was “more like a mannick than a B. of B.K. (supposed to mean a Baronet of British Kingdom) to have a child born in such a hovel.”  Still the new man wrapped himself in impenetrable secrecy.  The Dowager Lady Tichborne complained that while pressed to send everybody money, she was not even allowed to know the whereabouts nor present name of her lost Roger; and she entreated piteously to be allowed to communicate more directly.  It was nothing to her that the accounts the pretender had given of Roger’s life were wrong in every particular, except where her own advertisement had furnished information.  I think she said on this point, “My poor dear Roger confuses everything in his head just as in a dream, and I believe him to be my son, though his statements differ from mine.”  In the midst of this curious correspondence trouble once more entered the old home at Tichborne.  Sir Alfred, the younger brother of Roger, was dead, and the poor half-crazed mother in a solitary lodging in her loved Paris was left more than ever desolate.  Widowed and childless, she had nothing now but to brood over her sorrows, and cling to the old dream of the miraculous saving of her eldest born, who, since the terrible hour of shipwreck—­now twelve years past—­had given no real token of existence.  The position of affairs at Tichborne was remarkable, for though there were hopes of an heir to Tichborne, Sir Alfred had left no child.  Should the child—­unborn, but already fatherless—­prove to be a girl, or other mischance befall, there was an end of the old race of Tichborne.  The property would then go to collaterals, and the baronetcy must become extinct.  It was under the weight of these new sorrows that the Dowager Lady Tichborne wrote pitiable letters to Gibbes, promising money and asking for more particulars; while enclosing at the same time to the man who thus so unaccountably kept himself aloof a letter beginning, “My dear and beloved Roger, I hope you will not refuse to come back to your poor afflicted mother.  I have had the great misfortune to lose your poor dear father, and lately I have lost my beloved son Alfred.  I am now alone in this world of sorrow, and I hope you will take that into consideration, and come back.”  It is hardly surprising that during this time Mr. Gibbes was constantly urging his mysterious client to relinquish his disguise.  Why not write to the mother and mention some facts known only to those two which would at once convince her?  True, he had already mentioned “facts,” which turned out to be fictions, and yet the Dowager’s faith was unabated.  Mr. Gibbes’s client was therefore justified in his answer, that he “did not think it needful.”  But Gibbes was pressing, for it happened that the Dowager had in one of her letters said, “I shall expect an answer from him.  As I know his handwriting, I shall know at once whether it is him.”  Accordingly we find the Claimant, under the direction of Mr. Gibbes, penning this:—­