How came it all to pass now? Yet the old Major had ever been so kind and affectionate to him--to both, in fact, equally so, treating them as his sons--that he felt only a stunning surprise, a crushing grief and bitter mortification, but not a vestige of anger; his love for the dead was too keen and deep for that. The packet, sealed and addressed to Mr. Kippilaw, though its contents were as yet unknown to him, seemed to corroborate the strange intelligence of Shafto; but the question naturally occurred to Florian, 'For what end or purpose had this lifelong mystery and change in their positions been brought about?' He asked this of Shafto again and again. 'It seems we have been very curiously deluded,' said that personage, not daring to look the sorrowful Florian straight in the face, and pretended to be intent on stuffing his pipe. 'Deluded--how?' 'How often am I to tell you,' exclaimed Shafto, with petulance and assumed irritation, 'that the contents of this packet prove that _I_ am the only son of Major Melfort (not MacIan at all), and that you--you----' 'What?' 'Are Florian Gyle, the nephew--adopted as a son. Mr. Kippilaw will tell you all about it.' 'And you, Shafto?' queried Florian, scarcely knowing, in his bewilderment, what he said. 'Mean to go in for my proper position--my title, and all that sort of thing, don't you see?' 'And act--how!' 'Not the proverbial beggar on horseback, I hope. I'll do something handsome for you, of course.' 'I want nothing done for me while I have two hands, Shafto.' 'As you please,' replied the latter, puffing vigorously at his pipe. 'I have had enough of hopeless drudgery for a quarterly pittance in the dingy office of old Carlyon,' said he, after a long pause; 'and, by all the devils, I'll have no more of it now that I am going to be rich.' Indeed, from the day of Lennard Melfort entrusting him with the packet, Shafto had done little else at the office but study the laws of succession in Scotland and England. 'How much you love money, Shafto!' said Florian, eying him wistfully. 'Do I? Well, I suppose that comes from having had so precious little of it in my time. I am a poor devil just now, but,' thought he exultantly, 'this "plant" achieved successfully, how many matrons with daughters unmarried will all be anxious to be mother to me! And Dulcie Carlyon I might have for asking; but I'll fly at higher game now, by Jove!' As further credentials, Shafto now possessed himself of Major Melfort's sword, commissions, and medals, while Florian looked in blank dismay and growing mortification--puzzled by the new position in which he found himself, of being no longer his father's son--a source of unfathomable mystery.