CHAPTER III.
LORD BECKENHAM'S STORY.
"When you left me, Mr. Hatteras, to visit Miss Wetherell at Potts Point I remained in the house for half an hour or so reading. Then, thinking no harm could possibly come of it, I started out for a little excursion on my own account. It was about half-past eleven then, and a very hot morning.
"Leaving the hotel I made for the ferry and crossed Darling Harbour to Millers Point; then, setting myself for a good ramble, off I went through the city, up one street and down another, to eventually bring up in the botanical gardens. The view was so exquisite that I sat myself down on a seat and gave myself up to rapturous contemplation of it. How long I remained there I could not possibly say. I only know that while I was watching the movements of a man-o'-war in the cove below me I became aware, by intuition for I did not look at him that I was the object of a close scrutiny by a man standing some little distance from me. Presently I saw him drawing closer to me, until he came boldly up and seated himself beside me. He was a queer-looking little chap, in some ways not unlike my old tutor Baxter, with a shrewd, clean-shaven face, gray hair, bushy eyebrows, and a long and rather hooked nose. He was well dressed, and when he spoke did so
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