After pausing awhile, he proceeded—
"When I came over to this country, I left, away up in the north of England, a widowed mother and sister with the full conviction that I had met my death by drowning. This is how it happened: I was travelling for a well-known firm of manufacturers in the Midlands, and had been absent on the Continent for some months. I had collected a lot of money on their account, when I was tempted one evening, with a so-called friend, to visit one of the many gambling hells which abound in most Continental cities. I was persuaded to play, and under the influence of the cursed drink, and the excitement of the game,—in which I met with some success at first,—I was led to plunge recklessly; until, when at length I was induced to leave, I found that I had lost heavily, and, what was worse, it was not my own money I had lost. In returning I had formed no clear idea as to what I was to do about the money lost, until, on board the boat I was travelling by, an event occurred which in a moment shaped out my course.
THE ALARM WAS GIVEN, AND THE ENGINES WERE AT ONCE SLOWED DOWN.
"During the passage, which was a rough one, a man fell overboard. The alarm was given, the engines were at once slowed down, and a boat was lowered, and for an hour every effort made to recover him. It was unavailing, as the body was not found.
"I had seen the man who was lost, and had been led to notice him rather closely, from the fact of his having taken up what I regarded as a dangerous position, with such a sea as was then on, in the stern of the vessel. So that when, from the sheltered position in which I was standing on the cabin stairs, I saw him fall over, I blamed myself that I had not warned him of the danger he was in.
"Whilst the attention of all on deck were engaged with the efforts being made to recover the body, a thought occurred to me which I at once proceeded to give effect to.
"I hastened down below, sought out the bunk in which I had seen the missing man during the morning,—it was next but one to my own,—and, as I remembered he was about my own age and size, I felt little hesitation in changing my own clothes for such of his as I found there, and with the result that, by remaining silent as to what I knew, on my clothes being found where his had been, and with papers in the pockets proclaiming who they belonged to, it was reported that I had been lost; whilst nothing, so far as I was able to learn, appears to have ever been said about the real man who was drowned, so that he must have had very few friends to inquire after him.
"Having thus effaced myself, I resolved to expatriate myself for fear of being discovered, and that is how I come to be here."
"A very infamous ruse on your part," said Ranger, who had listened with attention to all that Fellows had been relating. "Have you never written to let your mother know that you were alive?"