"I never 'eerd tell of that'n," said the stolid ostler.

"Are you really Swift Nicks, sir?" asked the lad, looking steadily at me
with frank, innocent eyes.

"No more than you are Jonathan Wild or Prester John, my son," I answered.

"Then who are you?" he persisted.

"I'm a poor splicer of fishing-rods. I get my living by riding about the
country on a fine horse, with one pair of pistols in my holsters and
another pair in my pocket, looking for nice little boys with broken
fishing-rods, and mending 'em--the rods, not the boys--so that father
never finds it out and the rod's better than ever it was. How big was the
chub?"

"That big!" said he, holding his hands about two feet apart.

"The great advantage, my son, of having your rod mended by me is that
ever afterwards you'll be able to tell a chub from a whale."

"Sir," said he proudly, "a Chartley never lies."

"Of course," said I, "it's hard to say exactly how big a fish is when
you've missed him. So your name's Chartley. Is this Chartley Towers?"

"It is," said he, with a taking boyish pride ringing in his voice. "We
are the Chartleys of Chartley Towers. We go back to Edward the Third."

Did ever man enjoy such fat luck as mine? I had been as hard beset as a