It's about--I forget rightly how long since, but it was just after I gave up the stewardship that I had occasion to go up to London on business of my own.
And there, one morning, as I was sauntering down the lower end of Regent Street, I met Gilbert Carstairs, whom I'd never seen since he left home.
He'd his arm in mine in a minute, and he would have me go with him to his rooms in Jermyn Street, close by--there was no denying him.

I went, and found his rooms full of trunks, and cases, and the like--he and a friend of his, he said, were just off on a sort of hunting-exploration trip to some part of Central America; I don't know what they weren't going to do, but it was to be a big affair, and they were to come back loaded up with natural-history specimens and to make a pile of money out of the venture, too.

And he was telling me all about it in his eager, excitable way when the other man came in, and I was introduced to him.

And, gentlemen, that's the man I saw--under the name of Sir Gilbert Carstairs--on the bench at Berwick only the other day! He's changed, of course--more than I should have thought he would have done in fifteen years, for that's about the time since I saw him and Gilbert together there in Jermyn Street,--but I knew him as soon as I clapped eyes on him, and whatever doubt I had went as soon as I saw him lift his right hand to his moustache, for there are two fingers missing on that hand--the middle ones--and I remembered that fact about the man Gilbert Carstairs had introduced to me.

I knew, I tell you, as I sat in that court, that the fellow there on the bench, listening, was an impostor!" We were all bending forward across the table, listening eagerly--and there was a question in all our thoughts, which Mr.
Lindsey put into words.
"The man's name ?" "It was given to me, in Jermyn Street that morning, as Meekin--Dr.
Meekin," answered Mr.Elphinstone.