two out of the three daughters of old Mr. Orton made affidavit that the Claimant was not their brother, nor any relation of theirs; the other sister and Charles Orton, however, made no affidavit.  Four years later the Claimant confessed that he was, after all, the mysterious visitor at the Globe public-house on that Christmas eve; that he shortly afterwards entered into secret correspondence and transactions with the Orton family; that he gave the sisters money whenever they wrote to say they were in want of any; and that after the period when Charles Orton was solicited to give information to “the other side,” he allowed him L5 a month—­Charles Orton, who was then in concealment, being addressed in their correspondence by the assumed name of “Brand.”  The Claimant’s explanation of these relations with the Orton family, which he at first denied, was, that their brother, Arthur Orton, had been a great friend of his for many years, and in various parts of Australia, and that hence he was desirous of assisting his family.  At one time he said that his object was to ascertain if his friend, Arthur Orton, had arrived in England; at another he stated, on oath, that when he sailed from Australia he left Arthur Orton there.  The solicitors for the defendants in the Chancery suit, however, did not hesitate to declare their conviction that the pretended Roger Tichborne was no other than Arthur Orton, youngest son of the late George Orton, butcher, of High Street, Wapping; that his visit to Wapping on the very night of his arrival was prompted by curiosity to know the position of his family, of whom he had not heard for some years; and that his stealthy transactions with the three sisters, and with the brother of Arthur Orton, had no object but that of furnishing them with an inducement to keep the dangerous secret of his true name and origin.

While all these discoveries were being made, the poor old lady went to live for a time with her supposed son at Croydon; but even she could not manage to stay in the extraordinary household, and after a time, though still strong, despite the advice of her best friends, that the huge impostor was her son, she left, and gradually becoming weaker and weaker in body as well as mind, she was, on the 12th of March 1868, found by a servant dead in a chair, and with no relative or friend at hand, in a hotel near Portman Square, where she had sought and found a shelter.

Amidst much that was vague in the Claimant’s account of his past life, there were, at all events, two statements of a precise and definite character.  These were, first, that he had been at Melipilla, in Chili, and had there known intimately a man named Thomas Castro, whose name he had afterwards assumed; and, secondly, that in 1854, he had been engaged as herdsman to Mr. William Foster, of Boisdale, in Gippsland, Australia.  If he were an impostor, these statements were undoubtedly imprudent.  But they served the purpose of establishing the identity of his career