"Your mother's name was Dorothy Kenneir. She was, before her marriage, the matron of a home in the East End of London, and a lady devoted to philanthropic work. Your father was a police-court missionary."
Brooks was leaning a little forward in his chair. These things were true enough. Who was his visitor?
"Your father, through over-devotion to the philanthropic works in which he was engaged, lost his reason temporarily, and on his partial recovery I understand that the doctors considered him still to be mentally in a very weak state. They ordered him a sea voyage. He left England on the Corinthia fifteen years ago, and I believe that you heard nothing more of him until you received the news of his death—probably ten years back."
"Yes! Ten years ago.
"Your mother, I think, lived for only a few months after your father left England. You found a guardian in Mr. Ascough of Lincoln's Inn Fields. There my knowledge of your history ceases.
"How do you know these things?" Brooks asked.
"I was with your father when he died. It was I who wrote to you and sent his effects to England."
"You were there—in Canada?"
"Yes. I had a dwelling within a dozen miles of where your father had built his hut by the side of the great lake. He was the only other Englishman within a hundred miles. So I was with him often."
"It is wonderful—after all these years," Brooks exclaimed. "You were there for sport, of course?"