The captain turned and sat down. The boy stood in the doorway, staring at his reflex self in the mirror. The captain understood his consternation. “Come along, my poor boy,” he said. “How did you get into this mess?” “I think I know,” answered Clare, “but I’m not sure.” “You must have been drunk,” sighed the captain. “Oh, no, sir!” returned Clare, with one of his radiant smiles. “I’ve had but one glass of beer in my life, and I didn’t like it.” The captain smiled too, and gazed at him for several moments without speaking. “It seems to me,” he said at last, but as if he were thinking of something quite different, “you must be in want of food.” “Oh, no, sir!” answered Clare again, “I’m used to going without.” Like a child the sport of an evil fairy, he was again the boy of the old wanderings, in the old, hungry times. But did he ever look so lost as in the mirror before him? he wondered. “You haven’t told me----” said the captain, and stopped short, as if he dreaded going further. “I will tell you anything you want to know, sir. Please ask me.” “You say you did not come on board the frigate: what am I to understand by that?” “That I was brought, sir, in my sleep. It wouldn’t be fair, would it, sir, to mention names, when I don’t know for certain who they were that brought me? I never knew anything till I opened my eyes, and thought I was in----” He paused. “_Where_ did you think you were?” asked the captain eagerly. “In the dome of the angels, sir,” answered Clare. The captain’s face fell. He thought him an innocent, on whom rascals had been playing a practical joke. But that made no difference! If he were a simpleton, he might none the less be----! Was _her_ boy left to----? He shuddered visibly, and again was silent. “Tell me,” he said at length, “what you remember.” He meant--of the circumstances that immediately preceded his coming to himself on board the Panther; but Clare began with the first thing his memory presented him with. Perhaps he was yet a little dazed. He had not got through a single sentence, when he saw that something earlier wanted telling first; and the same thing happening again and again within the first five minutes of his narration, sir Harry saw he had before him a boy either of fertile imagination, or of “strange, eventful history.” But either supposition had its difficulty. If, on the one hand, he had had the tenth part of the experiences hinted at; if, for one thing, he had been but a single month on the tramp, how had he kept such an innocent face, such an angelic smile? If, on the other hand, he was making up these tales, why did he not look sharper? and whence the angelic smile? Did the seeming innocence indicate only such a lack of intellect as occasionally accompanies a remarkable individual gift? He must make him begin at the beginning, and tell everything he knew, or might pretend to know about himself!