“I knocked about for nine or ten years,” continued Jetsam, “both in England and France, chiefly fishing. Then I suddenly became respectable. I got a place in a house-agency in Cannes, chiefly on the strength of my knowledge of French and English. Of course, that only lasted during the winter season. But my employer had a similar agency in Ostend during the summer. It was in Ostend that I became gay. I joined a theatrical troupe. I travelled a great deal. I did everything except make money. And after ten years of that I settled down again as a house-agency clerk. I really was rather good at that, much better than as a music-hall performer with revolvers, for instance. And in various ‘pleasure cities’ of Europe I acted as a clerk for over twenty years. Think of it--twenty years! And me growing older and narrower and more gloomy every year in the service of ‘pleasure.’ I never saved any money to speak of, even though I remained single, perhaps because I remained single. And then one day, finding myself at St. Malo, I thought I would go and have a look at that fishing village which I had fled from over thirty years before. My delightful foster-father was, of course, dead; so was the schoolmaster; but one or two people remembered me, and among them was an old woman who had been a charming young girl when I left. It appeared that my old foster-father had fallen deeply in love with her in a senile way, and at her parents’ instigation she had married him for his money. He had confided to her, once when he thought he was dying, the secret of the substitution on Exeter platform. And now she told me. She had always liked me. You should have heard her pronounce ‘Exeter.’ It was the funniest thing.” Mr. Jetsam laughed hardly. “So that was how you got on the track?” said Carpentaria. “Yes. I then pursued my inquiries in Torquay, and I found my old nurse. She told me that the real child of Mr. Ilam had a large crimson birthmark on the calf of his left leg. I had that mark. She also told me that there existed a photograph--one of the old daguerreotypes--of me as a child in the arms of my step-mother, my father standing close by, and that the mark on my leg was most clearly visible on this photograph. And that was the only real solid piece of information that I obtained, except that the photograph used to be kept in an old lacquered box. I had an instinct that the photograph had been preserved. And it was preserved--until to-night! I relied on the photograph. I could dimly recollect Torquay and Exeter platforms, but of what use would my assertions be without some proof, some tangible proof? When I thought of my wasted and spoiled and miserable life--and of what it might have been had I not been hated by a woman, I was filled with hatred and with--with such sorrow as you can’t understand.” A sob escaped from Mr. Jetsam, and Carpentaria got up and took his hand. “It is not too late for justice,” said Carpentaria.