"My dear sir, I don't know quite all the young men who have come to London during the last twenty years. What makes you think it?"
"My namesake was a brother--son of my father's first wife. He left home and disappeared. Rumour says he went to London, where he was last heard of in company of a companion named Fastnet."
"Eh?" said he. "The Fastnets are not a big clan. Are you sure that was the name?"
"It was certainly the name that reached me."
"Must refer to some one else then. I never knew or heard of any one of the name of Ingleton in my life."
Roger's countenance fell. The new scent appeared likely to be a false one after all.
"How long ago is all this?" asked his host.
"More than twenty years. My brother left home in a pique, and, I'm afraid, went to the bad in--"
"Twenty years?" said Mr Fastnet, putting down his cigar beside the glass. "What sort of fellow was he? A harum-scarum young dog, with impudent eyes, and a toss of his head that would have defied the bench of bishops?"
"Sit down!" continued Fastnet--"curly hair, arms like a young Hercules, as obstinate as a bulldog, with a temper like a tiger?"
"Left his mother and father in a furious tantrum, with a vow to cut off his head before he showed face at home again? A regular young demon, as honest as the Bank of England--no taste for vice in any shape or form, but plunged into it just to spite his friends, civil enough when you got him on the weather side, and no fool? Was that the fellow?"
"I'm sure you describe the very man," said Roger.
"Man? He was a boy; a raw-boned green boy, smarting under a sense of injustice, a regular, thorough-paced young Ishmaelite as you ever saw. I should fancy I did know him. But his name was not Ingleton."
"No doubt he adopted his own Christian name as a disguise."
"Very likely. I could never get him to talk about his people. His one object was to lose himself--body and soul--it seemed to me. Bless you, I had little enough voice in his proceedings. I was wild enough, but I promise you I was a milksop to him. Neck or nothing was his motto, and he lived up to it. The one drawback to success in his particular line was that he would insist on being a gentleman. Fatal complaint to any one who wants to go to the bad."
