"What was his name, Lightning?" Sim asked.
"His name was Will Tunstall."
An exclamation burst from both his hearers.
"Your uncle!" Sim exclaimed. "Waal, that beats all, and to think that we should have been all this time together and never known that. Is your name Tunstall too?"
"Yes, Hugh Tunstall."
"To think now, doctor!" Sim said; "and we never knowed him except as Hugh or Lightning, and he is Will Tunstall's nephew. Why, lad, Bill—English Bill we called him—was a mate of ours, and a better mate men never worked with."
"You are like him, lad," the doctor said in a voice so different from that in which he had before spoken that Hugh quite started. "I thought you reminded me of someone, and now I know. It was English Bill. He was just as tall and as straight as you are, and laughed and talked just as you do. I wonder, Sim, we didn't notice it at once. Well, well, that is strange!"
Hugh was greatly surprised. It was indeed strange that he should have met these two mates of his uncle. Stranger still that they should have entertained such evident affection for a man who seemed to him to differ in character so widely from them. He was surprised, too, at the doctor's remarks about his resemblance to his uncle, for he could see no likeness whatever.
"Well," he said, "I should have had no idea that I was like my uncle. I think you must have forgotten his figure. He is tall and muscular certainly, but he is much darker than I am, and, I think, altogether different."
The doctor and Sim looked at each other with astonishment.