can bring."

"Ay," continued the woman, "but I doubt if you'll catch him. He left Mr.
Napier's service about ten years ago, and I never heard mair o' him."

"Nor I either," said Mrs. Hislop.

"Well, we must search for him," added Mr. White; "for that man alone, so
far as I can see, is he who will unravel this strange business."

And thus the day's work finished. The writer parted for Mill's Court,
and Mrs. Hislop, filled with doubts, hopes, and anxieties, sought her
humble dwelling in Toddrick's Wynd, where Henney waited for her with all
the solicitude of a daughter; but a word did not escape her lips that
might carry to the girl's mind a suspicion that the golden cord of their
supposed relationship ran a risk of being severed, even with the
eventual condition that one, if not both of the divisions, would be
transmuted into a string of diamonds.

Meanwhile the agent was in his own house, revolving all the points of a
puzzle more curious than any that had yet come within the scope of his
experience. Sometimes he felt confidence, and at other times despair;
and of course he had the consolation, which belongs to all litigants,
that the opposite party was undergoing the same process of oscillation.
It was clear enough that Cowie was the required Oedipus; and if it
should turn out that he was dead, or could not be found, the advantage
was, with a slight declination, on the part of Charles Napier; insomuch
as, while he was indisputably the nephew of the deceased, the orphan,
Henrietta, was under the necessity of proving her birth and pedigree.
And so, as it appeared, Mr. Dallas was of that opinion, for the very