"So he could contribute his share of epolepsy to the family collection, I suppose," sez I.
"Well, James gets an awful callin' down," sez Bill, "an' he cuts loose from the family an' goes to live in London, where he's a leftenant. Richard Cleighton, his cousin, who is the heir presumptive, once removed, sneaks down there an' comes back with the report that James is married to Alice LeMoyne, a music-hall dancer."
"Jim swung purty wide in his taste for women, didn't he?" sez I.
"The upshot of it was," sez Bill, never heedin' me, "that they settled with James, an' he lit out—his mother had died several years before. About four years after, this Alice LeMoyne dies, an' on her deathbed she confesses that she is the wife of Richard Cleighton an' helped to put up the job on James to get him out of the way, as the heir apparent didn't look like a long-liver, an' she thought she would like to be an Erless, with a chance of being a Duchess even."
"An' you mean to tell me that this low-grade Dick Cleighton puts up that job on Jim, just so he can beat him to the title?" sez I.
"Yes," sez Bill, "you see he was the heir presumptive, only once removed."
"Well, if I'd had the job o' removin'," sez I, "once, would 'a' been plenty."
"That put Richard out o' the runnin'," sez Bill, "Lord Wilfred, the apparent, was livin' along all right, an' the old Earl had come to the conclusion that when it came to a presumptive, he'd sooner have Jim; so he turned the hose on Dick, an' started out to find Jim. Jim wrote 'em from New York that he was goin' to South Africa, an' then he wrote 'em from Australia that he was goin' to India, an' then he wrote 'em from—"
"Oh, those was only jokes," sez I. "Jim's all right; but what become of Dick?"
"Nobody knows," sez Bill, "an' nobody cares. He's got lots better health than Lord Wilfred, but he's got some epolepsy, too, an' he's a mean sneak. His mother was insane, but she left him a little bunch of money."