"Yet all the same," he muttered to himself, as now the mule bore him along a more or less good road which traversed copses of oleanders and henna plants, allamandas and Cuban Royal palms--the latter of which formed occasionally a grateful shade from the glare of the sun--"all the same, I wish that darkey had not spoken about my father's cruelty. I should have preferred never to learn that he bore such a character. He must have been very different from my uncle, who, in spite of the one error of his life, was the gentlest soul that ever lived."

All the way out from England to New Orleans, and thence to Belize by a different steamer, his thoughts had been with that dear uncle--who survived the disclosure he had made but eight days--he being found dead in his bed on the morning of the ninth day--and those thoughts were with him now. Gentle memories, too, and kindly, with in them never a strain of reproach for what had been done by him in his hour of madness and desire for revenge; and with no other current of ideas running through his reflections but one of pity and regret for the unhappiness his real father must have experienced at finding himself bereft at once of both wife and child. Regret and sorrow, too, for the years which that father must have spent in mourning for him, perhaps in praying that, as month followed month, his son might in some way be restored to him. And now he--that son--was in the colony; here, in the very locality where the bereaved man must have passed so many sad and melancholy years! Here, but too late!

Ere he died, George Ritherdon had bidden his nephew make his way to British Honduras and proclaim himself as what he was; also he had provided him with that very written statement which he had spoken of as being in preparation for Julian's own information in case he should die suddenly, ere the latter returned home.

"With that in your possession," he had said, two days before his death actually occurred, "what's there that can stand in the way of your being acknowledged as his son? He cannot have forgotten my handwriting; and even if he has, the proofs of what I say are contained in the intimate knowledge that I testify in this paper of all our surroundings and habits out there. That paper is a certificate of who you are."

"Suppose he is dead when I get there, or that he should have married again. What then?"

"He may be dead, but he has not married again. Remember what I told you last night. I know my brother has remained a widower."

"I 

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