Left to himself, the barrister compiled memoranda for an hour or more. He
read through what he had written.

"The web is spreading quickly," he murmured. "I wonder what sort of fly we
shall catch! Is he buzzing about under our very noses, or will he be an
unknown variety? As they say in the Argentine--_Quien sabe?_"

During the journey to Stowmarket he mastered the contents of the bulky
document sent from Glen Tochan. It contained a great many irrelevant
details, but he made the following notes:--

After the duel in 1763, David Hume, the man who avenged with his
sword the supposed injury inflicted upon his father by the first
Sir Alan Hume-Frazer, escaped to the Netherlands, and was never
heard of again.

There was a local tradition on the Scotch estate that five
Hume-Frazers would meet with violent deaths in England. The reason
for this singular belief was found in the recorded utterances of
an old nurse, popularly credited with the gift of second sight,
who prophesied, after the outlawry of the Humes in 1745, that
there would be five long-lived generations of both families, and
that five Frazers would die in their boots.

"Curiously enough," commented the old gentleman who supplied this
information, "Aunt Elspeth's prediction is capable of two
interpretations, owing to the fact that the first Sir Alan Frazer
assumed the additional surname of Hume, I have absolutely no
knowledge of any distinct branch of the Hume family. David Hume's