'Why, you know—don't you? the poor fellow's not quite right here,' and he tapped the centre of his own towering forehead with the delicate tip of his white middle finger. 'I've seen a little of him; he's an angler, so am I; and he showed me the fishing of the river, here, last summer, and often amused me prodigiously. He's got some such very odd maggots! I don't say, mind ye, he's mad, there are many degrees, and he's quite a competent parish clerk. He's only wrong on a point or two, and one of them is Charles Archer. I believe for a while he thought you were he; and Dangerfield laughed his dry, hard chuckle.
'Where, Sir, do you suppose Charles Archer is now to be found?' urged Mervyn.
'Why, what remains of him, in Florence,' answered Dangerfield.
'You speak, Sir, as if you thought him dead.'
'Think? I know he's dead. I knew him but three weeks, and visited him in his sickness—was in his room half an hour before he died, and attended his funeral,' said Dangerfield.
'I implore of you, Sir, as you hope for mercy, don't trifle in this matter,' cried Mervyn, whose face was white, like that of a man about to swoon under an operation.
'Trifle! What d'ye mean, Sir?' barked out Dangerfield, rabidly.
'I mean, Sir, this—I've information he's positively living, and can relieve my father's memory from the horrible imputation that rests upon it. You know who I am!'
'Ay, Sir, Lord Castlemallard told me.'
'And my life I cheerfully devote to the task of seizing and tracing out the bloody clue of the labyrinth in which I'm lost.'