"Sold! Who sold you? Where did it take place, and who paid the money?" Douglas asked excitedly, coming closer to Phil. "As far as I have been able to learn from my adopted father, a poor woman, with many children, sold me. Where, though, I do not recollect I was sold to Mr Western, at one time an officer in the army, but for many years a clergyman." Douglas McNeil stared at him with wide-open eyes, and seemed strangely excited. "Listen, Phil," he said earnestly. "About twenty years ago my aunt, my mother's younger sister, fell in love with a poor officer in the navy. She married him against the wishes of her parents, and my grandfather, who was a stubborn hard-hearted man, refused to have anything more to do with her, refused even to hear of her or help her in any way. A year later Frank Davidson, the husband, was drowned at sea, and my aunt brought a boy into the world. For five years her relatives heard nothing. But the old grandfather had already repented of his harshness, and enquiries were set on foot. It is an odd story, Phil, and is full of sadness. That unhappy aunt of mine was friendless, and to obtain a post as governess was compelled to part with her child. You can imagine the poor thing's grief and loneliness. She placed the child with a certain woman who kept a kind of baby-farm in the midlands. For a year all went well, but my aunt died very suddenly of fever, and we learnt afterwards, from people who lived near the baby-farm, that the boy we were in search of was disposed of to a clergyman. The neighbours remembered having seen him. I suppose one cannot blame the woman in charge, though the thing sounds hateful and impossible in our free England. But, finding there was no yearly instalment coming for the child's keep, she answered an advertisement and handed him over to a clergyman. Unfortunately she herself died a few months before we instituted the search, and although we advertised widely we never obtained any more information. Tell me now, Phil, what you think of that?" There was a long silence. "Could it be possible that, after all, he was indeed the lost child?" Phil asked himself. "Was it possible that the story just narrated was his own, and referred to his father and mother. Was the vicar's test to be a useless one, for he had trained an adopted son for one purpose only? What joy it would be to have relations of his own?" The thoughts crowded through his brain, and his lips trembled with hope and eagerness.