"If you have perused those documents which you have in your hand, you will have some faint idea. Ivor, when its your funeral _I'll_ smile. Mabel, Duchess of Dachet, it is beginning to dawn upon the vacuum which represents my brain that I've been the victim of one of the prettiest things in practical jokes that ever yet was planned. When that fellow brought you that card at Cane and Wilson's--which, I need scarcely tell you, never came from me--some one walked out of the front entrance who was so exactly like you that both Barnes and Moysey took her for you. Moysey showed her into the carriage, and Barnes drove her home. But when the carriage reached home it was empty. Your double had got out upon the road." The Duchess uttered a sound which was half a gasp, half sigh: "Hereward!" "Barnes and Moysey, with beautiful and childlike innocence, when they found that they had brought the thing home empty, came straightway and told me that you had jumped out of the brougham while it had been driving full pelt through the streets. While I was digesting that piece of information there came the first epistle, with the lock of your hair. Before I had time to digest that there came the second epistle, with yours inside, and, as a guarantee of the authenticity of your appeal, the same envelope held this." The Duke handed the Duchess the half of the broken sixpence. She stared at it with the most unequivocal astonishment. "Why, it looks just like my sixpence." She put her hand to her breast, feeling something that was there. "But it isn't! What wickedness!" "It is wickedness, isn't it? Anyhow, that seemed good enough for me; so I posted off the five hundred pounds to save your arm--not to dwell upon your little finger." "It seems incredible!" "Its sounds incredible; but unfathomable is the folly of man, especially of a man who loves his wife." The Duke crossed to Mr. Dacre. "I don't want, Ivor, to suggest anything in the way of bribery and corruption, but if you could keep this matter to yourself, and not mention it to your friends, our white-hatted and gardenia-button-holed acquaintance is welcome to his five hundred pounds, and----Mabel, what on earth are you laughing at?" The Duchess appeared, all at once, to be seized with inextinguishable laughter. "Hereward," she cried, "just think how that man must be laughing at you!" And the Duke of Datchet thought of it. THE STRANGE OCCURRENCES IN CANTERSTONE JAIL. CHAPTER I. MR. MANKELL DECLARES HIS INTENTION OF ACTING ON MAGISTERIAL ADVICE.