"Edward Hopgood!" exclaimed Harry, passing his hand over his forehead--" surely I have heard that name before. Wait a moment," he added, to Stebbins; while he endeavoured to recollect why that name, singular in itself, had a familiar sound to him. At length his eye brightened, the whole matter became more clear; he recollected when a mere child, a year or two before Mr. Stanley's death, while staying at Greatwood during a vacation, to have heard of the bad conduct of a young man named Edward Hopgood, a lawyer's clerk in the adjoining village, who had committed forgery and then run away. The circumstances had occurred while Harry was at Greatwood, and had been so much talked of in a quiet, country neighbourhood, as to make a decided impression on himself, child as he was. Harry also remembered to have heard Mr. Stanley tell Mr. Wyllys that this Hopgood was very distantly related to himself, through the mother, who had made a very bad connexion; adding, that this lad had been at Greatwood, and would have been assisted by himself, had he not behaved very badly, and done so much to injure his own son that he had been forbidden the house. Harry farther remembered, that Clapp had belonged to the same office from which this Hopgood had run away. There was, however, one point which he did not understand; he thought he had since heard that this Hopgood had turned actor, and died long since of yellow-fever, at New Orleans. Still, he felt convinced that there was a good foundation for Stebbins's story, and he hoped soon to unravel the whole plot, from the clue thus placed in his hands. "Go on," said Harry, after this pause. "You say this man, whom you knew to be Hopgood, called himself William Stanley. What became of him?" "It is the same chap that hoisted your colours, Mr. Hazlehurst; him that the jury gave the verdict to in Philadelphia." "Yes; I knew it must be the same individual before you spoke," said Harry, with a view to keep his informant accurate. "But how did you know that his name was Hopgood? for you say he had shipped under another." "I knew it because he had told me so himself. He told me how he had run away from a lawyer's office in Pennsylvany, gone to New Orleans and turned play-actor a while, then shammed dead, and had his name printed in the papers among them that died of yellow-fever. He told me all that in his first voyage, when we were shipmates, and that was just the time that my brother Jonathan was wrecked in the Jefferson." "When you afterwards heard him say he was William Stanley, did you tell him you knew his real name?" "Yes; I told him I knew he lied; for my brother had buried Stanley with his own hands, and that I had his papers at home. Then he told me, he was only laughing at the green-horns." "Did you mention to any one at the time that you knew this man was not William Stanley?" "No, sir, for I didn't speak to him until we were alone; and we parted company next morning, for I went to sea."