On the following day Gilbert Fenton took his second advertisement to the
office in Printing House Square; an advertisement offering a reward of
twenty pounds for any reliable information as to the marriage of Marian
Nowell. A week went by, during which the advertisement appeared on
alternate days; and at the end of that time there came a letter from the
parish-clerk of Wygrove, a small town about forty miles farther from
London than Lidford, stating that, on the 14th of March, John Holbrook
and Marian Nowell had been married at the church in that place. Gilbert
Fenton left London by an early train upon the morning after his receipt
of this letter; and at about three o'clock in the afternoon found himself
on the outskirts of Wygrove, rather a difficult place to reach, involving
a good deal of delay at out-of-the-way junctions, and a six-mile journey
by stage-coach from the nearest station.

It was about the dullest dreariest little town to which his destiny had
ever brought Gilbert Fenton, consisting of a melancholy high-street, with
a blank market-place, and a town hall that looked as if it had not been
opened within the memory of man; a grand old gothic church, much too
large for the requirements of the place; a grim square brick box
inscribed "Ebenezer;" and a few prim villas straggling off into the
country.

On one side of the church there was a curious little old-fashioned court,
wonderfully neat and clean, with houses the parlours whereof were sunk
below the level of the pavement, after the manner of these old places.
There was a great show of geraniums in the casements, and a general
aspect of brightness and order distinguished all these modest dwellings.
It was to this court that Mr. Fenton had been directed on inquiring for
Thomas Stoneham, the parish-clerk, at the inn where the coach deposited