And Andrew, docile, ceased at once; but standing in front of me, his back
to Madame, he noiselessly mimicked Madame's speech with his lips, so
drolly, so exquisitely, that Ben Flint's hearty laugh broke out again.

"Just look at the little devil! By Gum! He has a fortune in him."

I learned in the circus as much about Andrew as he knew himself. Perhaps
more; for a child of eight has lost all recollection of parents who died
before he was two. They were circus folk, English, trapeze artists, come,
they said, from a long tour in Australia, where Andrew was born, and their
first European engagement was in the Cirque Rocambeau. Their stay was
brief; their end tragic. Lackaday _Pere_ took to drink, which is the
last thing a trapeze artist should do. Brain and hand at rehearsal one
day lost co-ordination by the thousandth part of a second and Lackaday
_Mere_, swinging from her feet upwards, missed the anticipated grip,
and fell with a thud on the ground, breaking her spine. Whereupon Lackaday
_Pere_ went out and hanged himself from a cross-beam in an empty
stable.

Thus, at two years old, Andrew Lackaday started life on his own account.
From that day, he was alone in the world. Nothing in his parents' modest
luggage gave clue to kith or kin. Ben Flint who, as a fellow-countryman,
went through their effects, found not even one letter addressed to them,
found no sign of their contact with any human being living or dead. They
called themselves professionally "The Lackadays." Whether it was their real
name or not, no one in the world which narrowed itself within the limits of
the Cirque Rocambeau, could possibly tell. But it was the only name that
Andrew had, and as good as any other. It was part of his inheritance, the
remainder being ninety-five francs in cash, some cheap trinkets, a couple
of boxes of fripperies which were sold for a song, a tattered copy of