"The deuce he is!" came the answering roar, and down came Mr. Allardyce, pipe in hand, with his wife and Mistress Lucy close behind him. "How d'ye do, sir?" says I, advancing, feeling my face glow with pleasure at seeing my kind friends again as much as any other emotion, I am sure. "Come back for a job, Joe?" cries Mr. Allardyce, gripping my hand heartily. "Ah! you impostor! We know all about you, you young dog, don't we, madam? Joe! Humph!" "You can't shorten it like that, sir," said I, laughing, and giving a hand to the ladies in turn. And I don't know whether 'twas due to the suit of clothes, but certainly I felt, as I shook hands with Mistress Lucy, none of the shamefaced awkwardness that had overcome me when I stood before her in rags and she called me "poor man." They had me into the room where I had begged work of Mr. Allardyce, and despatched Susan (still giggling) to bespeak a meal of Martha the cook. "And you must give an account of yourself, Mr. Bold," says Mr. Allardyce, putting out a chair for me and pushing a pipe into my hand. "With all my heart, sir," said I, "but first will you please enlighten me as to how you know my name?" "Why we learned it a month after you left us," he replied. "'Twas Roger found it out. "He is not here, hang it!" he said, his face falling a little. "We could not keep him at home after you had gone, and now he's carrying an ensign in the foot regiment of General Webb. "Well, 'twas he found out all about you. Having set his heart on going into the army, he must needs go into Shrewsbury to take lessons in fencing from a Captain Galsworthy he had heard of. And it appears that during his very first bout with the captain he tried a botte that you had taught him. The captain drops his point, and stares a moment, and then cries 'Ads my life! The only man in the world that knows that botte besides myself is Humphrey Bold. Where in the name of Beelzebub did you learn it?' And so it all came out, and the whole story of the villainous doings of those Cluddes and Lawyer Vetch--" "Stay, sir," I interrupted; "Mr. Vetch is a very dear friend of mine, and I would lay my life he is innocent of any share of the trickery that lost me my father's lands." "Maybe, maybe: I know the story of the will," said Mr. Allardyce. "Roger was wild with excitement when he came back, and nothing would satisfy him but that he must go to Bristowe and see if he could learn any news of you. But he could learn nothing, and--" "My dear," says Mistress Allardyce at this point, "you are keeping us waiting so long. Lucy and I want to hear Mr. Bold." "That's an extinguisher," cries he with a jolly laugh. "Light my pipe, Lucy, my dear; it will last a good half hour, and maybe that will be long enough for Mr. Bold's story."