Meanwhile there was the orphan Andrew Lackaday rich in his extreme youth and the fortune above specified, and violently asserting his right to live and enjoy. Meanwhile, too, Ben Flint and his wife had lost their pig Bob, Billy's predecessor. Bob had grown old and past his job and become afflicted with an obscure porcine disease, possibly senile decay, for which there was no remedy but merciful euthanasia. The Flints mourned him, desolate. They had not the heart to buy another. They were childless, pigless. But behold! There, to their hand was Andrew, fatherless, motherless. On an occasion, just after the funeral, for which Ben Flint paid, when Madame was mothering the tiny Andrew in her arms, and Ben stood staring, lost in yearning for the lost and beloved pig, she glanced up and said: "_Tiens_, why should he not replace Bob, _ce petit cochon?_" Ben Flint slapped his thigh. "By Gum!" said he, and the thing was done. The responsibility of self dependence for life and enjoyment was removed from the shoulders of young Andrew Lackaday for many years to come. In the course of time, when the child's _état civil_, as a resident in France, had to be declared, and this question of nationality became of great importance in after years--Madame said: "Since we have adopted him, why not give him our name?" But Ben, with the romanticism of Bohemia, replied: "No. His name belongs to him. If he keeps it, he may be able to find out something about his family. He might be the heir to great possessions. One never knows. It's a clue anyway. Besides," he added, the sturdy North countryman asserting itself, "I'm not giving my name to any man save the son of my loins. It's a name where I come from that has never been dishonoured for a couple of hundred years." "But it is just as you like, _mon chéri_," said Madame, who was the placidest thing in France. * * * * * For thirty years I had forgotten all this; but the "By Gum!" of Colonel Lackaday wiped out the superscription over the palimpsest of memory and revealed in startling clearness all these impressions of the past.