‘Joking,’ said the old man; ‘if you’d only had those patterns printed out slowly and indelibly, like me and Mrs. Lutton, poor thing, you’d have known it was no joke.’ ‘Well, they didn’t eat you that time, at any rate,’ said Ernest, coming to the rescue; ‘a hero can’t be killed in the first volume; and what was the next narrow escape?’ ‘Years afterwards I was cast away in the south seas, and came ashore on a spar at an island where they’d never heard of a white man. They had sacrifices and prayers and made a kind of lottery about whether they should eat me; when, as luck would have it, the chief had lost his eldest son a year before, and the priests said I was him come back. So I was turned into a Kanaka Prince of Wales.’ ‘And was the rank properly kept up?’ ‘Jolliest place I ever was in, before or since; I had been starved and shipwrecked, and I tell you it was a pleasant change; I was the second man in the island. I had a palace, partly leaves, but cool and pleasant. I had thirty—well—hum—ha—more attendants than I knew what to do with. I cried, I know, when a Yankee whaler took me off six months after. But come, this won’t do, Master Ernest, you mustn’t keep me spinning sea-yarns all night about myself. You haven’t half told us about your doings. Was Captain Jinks really a pleasant sort of fellow? And how about the lock-up?’ ‘Come, papa,’ said Antonia, ‘it’s hardly fair to Mr. Neuchamp to laugh at him about that little mistake—any one might be taken in by a nice-looking, clever, plausible man.’ ‘Well, I confess,’ said Ernest boldly, ‘I _was_ taken in, though I ought to have known better. If I had seen a seedy aristocrat in my own country, I should not have made a travelling companion of him. But he was very clever and good-looking, and I thought there was nothing wonderful in such a man being out of luck in a colony.’ ‘Never mind; fault on the right side,’ said Mr. Frankston—‘anything’s better than being suspicious; you’ll cut your wisdom teeth before you’ve done with us.’ END OF VOL. I _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_. * * * * * Transcriber's note: Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Other variations in hyphenation, spelling and punctuation remain unchanged.