"No, by George! I should never have known you," went on Mr Santorex. "And Chickie, here, called you something else just now--what the deuce was it?" "Vipan? Yes, it was an old name in the family at one time. I've revived it lately for my own convenience. That's how I was known out West." "Think you'd have known the child here?" went on "the child's" father, turning to Yseulte, who had followed him into the room, and was now staring in amazement at this new revelation. "Well, I've had rather the advantage of her; a mean advantage she'll say." "She" was incapable of saying anything just then. That photograph of the disinherited Ralph Vallance, which, since her return home, she had managed to conjure out of her father's boxes of old correspondence, and had treasured because it bore some slight resemblance to her dead lover, now turned out to be nothing less than his actual portrait. Yet during all their daily intercourse, so well had he guarded his secret, that not a shadow of a passing instinct had ever warned her of his identity. It was astounding. "Been to call on Dudley yet, Ralph?" said Mr Santorex, with a twinkle in his eye. "Oh, yes. We had a talk over old times. By the way, that's another misnomer. My real name's Rupert. They used to call me the other for short. Heaven knows why, but they did, and I dropped it when I went West. Shan't revive it." If ever there was a snug family party gathered together, it was that at the Elmcote dinner-table that night, when Rupert Vallance, as we must now call him, yielding to general request, but especially to an appealing glance from Yseulte's blue eyes, narrated his experiences from the time of his capture to his escape from the camp of the hostiles, only generalising however as to the agency of this latter event, and omitting for the present all mention of poor Geoffry's horrible death. But when it came to the narrator literally tucking himself in with the grisly denizen of the Indian grave, in the ghostly silence of the darkling forest, Mrs Santorex shivered and announced her intention of fainting; however, this effect was soon dispelled by the more pleasing _denouement_ of the stirring tale, how just in the nick of time, when alone, dismounted, barely half armed, and the savages still in search of him, he had been found by Smokestack Bill, who all this while, in hourly peril himself, had unweariedly watched his chances of coming to the aid of his friend. Smokestack Bill, too, with no less a companion than old Satanta, who had been wandering the country ever since his escape from the Ogallalla war-party, defying white or red to capture him, until, seeming to recognise his master's friend, he ran whinnying to the latter of his own accord. "He's a grand fellow, that scout," said Mr Santorex. "Why didn't you bring him over with you, Rupert?"