“Truly I am cured—­cured this very day—­I am not expecting it!”

“O, now you are mine!  I’ve got you back in the beauty and glory of your unsmirched poverty and your honorable obscurity, and nobody shall ever take you from me again but the grave!  And if—­”

“De earl of Rossmore, fum Englan’!”

“My father!” The young man released the girl and hung his head.

The old gentleman stood surveying the couple—­the one with a strongly complimentary right eye, the other with a mixed expression done with the left.  This is difficult, and not often resorted to.  Presently his face relaxed into a kind of constructive gentleness, and he said to his son: 

“Don’t you think you could embrace me, too?”

The young man did it with alacrity.  “Then you are the son of an earl, after all,” said Sally, reproachfully.

“Yes, I—­”

“Then I won’t have you!”

“O, but you know—­”

“No, I will not.  You’ve told me another fib.”

“She’s right.  Go away and leave us.  I want to talk with her.”

Berkeley was obliged to go.  But he did not go far.  He remained on the premises.  At midnight the conference between the old gentleman and the young girl was still going blithely on, but it presently drew to a close, and the former said: 

“I came all the way over here to inspect you, my dear, with the general idea of breaking off this match if there were two fools of you, but as there’s only one, you can have him if you’ll take him.”

“Indeed I will, then!  May I kiss you?”

“You may.  Thank you.  Now you shall have that privilege whenever you are good.”

Meantime Hawkins had long ago returned and slipped up into the laboratory.  He was rather disconcerted to find his late invention, Snodgrass, there.  The news was told him that the English Rossmore was come,

—­“and I’m his son, Viscount Berkeley, not Howard Tracy any more.”

Hawkins was aghast.  He said: 

“Good gracious, then you’re dead!”

“Dead?”

“Yes you are—­we’ve got your ashes.”

“Hang those ashes, I’m tired of them; I’ll give them to my father.”

Slowly and painfully the statesman worked the truth into his head that this was really a flesh and blood young man, and not the insubstantial resurrection he and Sellers had so long supposed him to be.  Then he said with feeling—­

“I’m so glad; so glad on Sally’s account, poor thing.  We took you for a departed materialized bank thief from Tahlequah.  This will be a heavy blow to Sellers.”  Then he explained the whole matter to Berkeley, who said: 

“Well, the Claimant must manage to stand the blow, severe as it is.  But he’ll get over the disappointment.”

“Who—­the colonel?  He’ll get over it the minute he invents a new miracle to take its place.  And he’s already at it by this time.  But look here—­ what do you suppose became of the man you’ve been representing all this time?”