"By Jove!" he said inly; "twins!"
Then, warned by Chaytor's attitude that he was in danger of himself being discovered, he slipped between his blankets as noiselessly as he had slipped out of them. Waiting only to resume his disguise of beard and whiskers, Chaytor, candle in hand, went quietly and swiftly into the adjoining room and looked down upon the recumbent form of Jim the Hatter. Undoubtedly asleep, and sleeping like a top. Chaytor passed the candle across the man's face, who never so much as winked. Assured that there was no cause for alarm, Chaytor stepped back to his own recess, put out the light, and went to bed.
[CHAPTER XI.]
Leaving this schemer to his ill-earned repose, we strip the veil from his past and lay it bare.
Nature plays tricks, but seldom played a stranger than that of casting Newman Chaytor physically in the same mould as Basil. Born in different counties, with no tie of kinship between their families, their likeness to each other was so marvellous that any man seeing them for the first time side by side, without some such disguise as Chaytor wore on Gum Flat, and the second time apart, would have been puzzled to know which was which. But not less strange than this physical likeness was the contrast between their moral natures. One was the soul of guilelessness and honour, the other the soul of cunning and baseness. One walked the straight paths of life, the other chose the crooked.
Chaytor was born in London, and his parents occupied a respectable position. They gave him a good education, and did all they could to furnish him worthily for the battle of life. The affection they displayed was ill-requited. In his mother's eyes he was perfection, but his father's mind was often disturbed when he thought of the lad's future. Perhaps in his own nature there was a moral twist which caused him to doubt; perhaps his own youth was distinguished by the vices he detected in his son. However that may be, he took no blame to himself, preferring rather to skim the surface than to seek discomfort in psychological depths.
The parents discussed their son's future.
"We will make a doctor of him," said the father.
"He will be a great physician," said the mother.
At this time Chaytor was eighteen years of age. At twenty it was decided that he was in the wrong groove; at least, that was the statement of the doctor who had undertaken his professional education. It was not an entirely ingenuous statement; the master was eager to get rid of his pupil, whose sharp practices distressed him.