The "Earl" was indeed a terror, especially when he had been drinking. His belief in his peerage was as absolute as Colonel Sellers' in his millions. All he wanted was money enough "to get over there" and "state his case." During the Tichborne trial Mark Twain and I were in London, and one day he said to me: "I have investigated this Durham business down at the Herald's office. There's nothing to it. The Lamptons passed out of the Demesne of Durham a hundred years ago. They had long before dissipated the estates. Whatever the title, it lapsed. The present earldom is a new creation, not the same family at all. But, I tell you what, if you'll put up five hundred dollars I'll put up five hundred more, we'll fetch our chap across and set him in as a claimant, and, my word for it, Kenealy's fat boy won't be a marker to him!" He was so pleased with his conceit that later along he wrote a novel and called it The Claimant. It is the only one of his books, though I never told him so, that I could not enjoy. Many years after, I happened to see upon a hotel register in Rome these entries: "The Earl of Durham," and in the same handwriting just below it, "Lady Anne Lambton" and "The Hon. Reginald Lambton." So the Lambtons--they spelled it with a b instead of a p--were yet in the peerage. A Lambton was Earl of Durham. The next time I saw Mark I rated him on his deception. He did not defend himself, said something about its being necessary to perfect the joke. "Did you ever meet this present peer and possible usurper?" I asked. "No," he answered, "I never did, but if he had called on me, I would have had him come up." III His mind turned ever to the droll. Once in London I was living with my family at 103 Mount Street. Between 103 and 102 there was the parochial workhouse, quite a long and imposing edifice. One evening, upon coming in from an outing, I found a letter he had written on the sitting-room table. He had left it with his card. He spoke of the shock he had received upon finding that next to 102--presumably 103--was the workhouse. He had loved me, but had always feared that I would end by disgracing the family--being hanged or something--but the "work'us," that was beyond him; he had not thought it would come to that. And so on through pages of horseplay; his relief on ascertaining the truth and learning his mistake, his regret at not finding me at home, closing with a dinner invitation. It was at Geneva, Switzerland, that I received a long, overflowing letter, full of flamboyant oddities, written from London. Two or three hours later came a telegram. "Burn letter. Blot it from your memory. Susie is dead."