I was ushered in. I had scarcely got inside the door before he shouted, “You here again! What the devil do you want now?” I replied that I had come on very important business. Rising to his feet, in a great state of anger, he blurted out, “I don’t want to hear anything from you—not a word,” and he came toward me. I stood my ground, facing him so boldly that he halted. I said, “I have something to tell you this time, and you have got to hear it whether you like it or not. I am not going till I tell you, and the sooner you let me commence, the sooner I will finish.” “Well, damn it!” he fairly screamed, “what have you got to say?” I calmed down a little and said, “I come to you with all the respect I can command; I want nothing from you whatever; no recognition, no place or position; and as to money, thanks to the best friend of my life, I probably have ten rupees to every one of yours; so I want nothing but to tell my story, and then there will be an end, so far as I am concerned.” I think he saw that I was not to be bluffed or bullied, and as I asked for nothing, it would be best to let me talk. “Go on then,” he said very sternly, but quite subdued, “and the sooner you get through the better!” I continued, “You were a sub-magistrate in Lucknow in the year —, and you kept a mussalmani in a muhalla.” “It’s a lie, every word of it!” he retorted. I went on regardless of his interruption. “You remember a M. Le Maistre there, for you rented one of his houses. One night, or rather toward morning, he met you in the gully coming from the muhalla. Another time he saw you coming in through the little back door—you remember it—and he saw you go up the narrow stairs in the corner to the upper rooms, where the woman lived.” “It’s all a lie, a damned lie!” he cried. I resumed, “You had two children by this woman, a boy and a girl, and then you left her.” “You cannot prove a word you have said,” he interjected. “You left a number of letters with her.” “I deny them,” he replied. “You thought,” I went on, “that you were very shrewd in not signing the letters, but I got a lot of papers from the cutchery written by you, and signed with your name, and here they are, a dozen of them and a package of letters, all written by you, with every stroke and mark and dot alike.” “What damnable plot are you hatching?” he exclaimed. I continued, “In the packet of letters there was a photograph of yourself. This is it.” “Let me see it,” he said, reaching out for it. “You can look at it, but it shall not go out of my hands,” I said. “That is no likeness of mine,” he replied. I started again, “I went to the photographer and obtained this, another of you, and on the back is written by the same hand that wrote the letters and papers: ‘You may make me one dozen like this. H. J. Smith.’ Is that your handwriting and signature?” I inquired, holding up the back of the picture for him to see.