Percie had made the best use of the few minutes that intervened between his own and his father's arrival, and had produced a stage effect that proved his dramatic powers to be of no ordinary kind. The scout being fortunately in the way, a basin containing a gruelly compound had been extemporised, and placed judiciously upon the table, in company with a stout physic-bottle, and a wine-glass. Drawn up to the table was a sofa; and, reclining languidly thereupon, his feeble body supported by the pillows from his bed, was the figure of Mr. Percival Wylde, denuded of coat, waist coat, neckcloth, and boots, and clad in a loose dressing-gown and slippers. His pallid features betokened, either the rapid inroads of his malady, or the superficial use of a certain cretaceous tooth-powder. A close scrutiny would, perhaps, have enabled the spectator to determine under which head he might assign the palor; but the window-blind was drawn down, and a dim religious light pervaded the apartment. As the Old Boy entered the room, Mr. Percival Wylde was lying back upon his pillows, apparently engaged in sipping the gruellous compound.
"Why, Percie! good gracious! can it be you?" gasped the Old Boy.
"Why father! good gracious! can it be you?" responded Percie, in a weak voice, like an echo in a consumption.
"Why—how—eh—what—you—eh!" gasped the Old Boy, in a fit of unintelligible monosyllables, which, if they were meant to express what was passing in his mind, ought to have been expanded into these words: "Why, how did you get here, when I have just left you in London? Can I have been deceived after
