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the boy will be the
only representative of one of the most ancient families in the world,
that is, so far as families can be traced. You will laugh at me when I say
it, but one day it will be proved to you beyond a doubt, that my
sixty-fifth or sixty-sixth lineal ancestor was an Egyptian priest of Isis,
though he was himself of Grecian extraction, and was called
Kallikrates.[*] His father was one of the Greek mercenaries raised by
Hak-Hor, a Mendesian Pharaoh of the twenty-ninth dynasty, and his
grandfather or great-grandfather, I believe, was that very Kallikrates
mentioned by Herodotus.[+] In or about the year 339 before Christ, just
at the time of the final fall of the Pharaohs, this Kallikrates (the priest)
broke his vows of celibacy and fled from Egypt with a Princess of
Royal blood who had fallen in love with him, and was finally wrecked
upon the coast of Africa, somewhere, as I believe, in the
neighbourhood of where Delagoa Bay now is, or rather to the north of
it, he and his wife being saved, and all the remainder of their company
destroyed in one way or another. Here they endured great hardships,
but were at last entertained by the mighty Queen of a savage people, a
white woman of peculiar loveliness, who, under circumstances which I

cannot enter into, but which you will one day learn, if you live, from
the contents of the box, finally murdered my ancestor Kallikrates. His
wife, however, escaped, how, I know not, to Athens, bearing a child
with her, whom she named Tisisthenes, or the Mighty Avenger. Five
hundred years or more afterwards, the family migrated to Rome under
circumstances of which no trace remains, and here, probably with the
idea of preserving the idea of vengeance which we find set out in the
name of Tisisthenes, they appear to have pretty regularly assumed the
cognomen of Vindex, or Avenger. Here, too, they remained for another
five centuries or more, till about 770 A.D., when Charlemagne invaded
Lombardy, where they were then settled, whereon the head of the
family seems to have attached himself to the great Emperor, and to
have returned with him across the Alps, and finally to have settled in
Brittany. Eight generations later his lineal representative crossed to
England in the reign of Edward the Confessor, and in the time of
William the Conqueror was advanced to great honour and power. From
that time to the present day I can trace my descent without a break. Not
that the Vinceys--for that was the final corruption of the name after its
bearers took root in English soil--have been particularly
distinguished--they never came much to the fore. Sometimes they were
soldiers, sometimes merchants, but on the whole they have preserved a
dead level of respectability, and a still deader level of mediocrity. From
the time of Charles II. till the beginning of the present century they
were merchants. About 1790 by grandfather made a considerable
fortune out of brewing, and retired. In 1821 he died, and my father
succeeded him, and dissipated most of the money. Ten years ago he
died also, leaving me a net income of about two thousand a year. Then
it was that I undertook an expedition in connection with /that/," and he
pointed to the iron chest, "which ended disastrously enough. On my
way back I travelled in the South of Europe, and finally reached Athens.
There I met my beloved wife, who might well also have been called the
'Beautiful,' like my old Greek ancestor. There I married her, and there,
a year afterwards, when my boy was born, she died."
[*] The Strong and Beautiful, or, more accurately, the Beautiful in
strength.

[+] The Kallikrates here referred to by my friend was a Spartan, spoken
of by Herodotus (Herod. ix. 72) as being remarkable for his beauty. He
fell at the glorious battle of Platæa (September 22, B.C. 479), when the
Lacedæmonians and Athenians under Pausanias routed the Persians,
putting nearly 300,000 of them to the sword. The following is a
translation of the passage, "For Kallikrates died out of the battle, he
came to the army the most beautiful man of the Greeks of that day--not
only of the Lacedæmonians themselves, but of the other Greeks also.
He when Pausanias was sacrificing was wounded in the side by an
arrow; and then they fought, but on being carried off he regretted his
death, and said to Arimnestus, a Platæan, that he did not grieve at dying
for Greece, but at not having struck a blow, or, although he desired so
to do, performed any deed worthy of himself." This Kallikrates, who
appears to have been as brave as he was beautiful, is subsequently
mentioned by Herodotus as