some years ago. You're aware, of course, that just outside the town here
is Ellingham Park, the seat of the Earl of Ellingham. Well, what I have
to tell you has to do with them, and I shall have to go back a good way.
Thirty-five years ago the head of the family was the seventh Earl, who
was then getting on in life. He was a very overbearing, harsh old
gentleman, not at all liked--the people here in Marketstoke, nearly all
of them his tenants, used to be perpetually at variance with him about
something or other; he was the sort of man who wanted to have his own way
about everything. And he had trouble at home, at any rate with his elder
son,--he only had two sons and no daughter,--and about the time I'm
talking of it came to a head. Nobody ever knew exactly what it was all
about, but it was well known that Lord Marketstoke--that was the elder
son's name--and his father, the Earl, were at cross purposes, if not
actually at daggers drawn, about something or other. And when Lord
Marketstoke was about twenty five or twenty-six there was a great quarrel
between them; it broke out one night, after dinner; the servants heard
angry words between them. That night, gentlemen, Lord Marketstoke left
the house and set off to London, and from that day to this he has never
been heard of or seen again--hereabouts, at any rate."

Mr. Pawle, who was listening with the deepest interest and attention,
glanced at Viner as if to entreat the same care on his part.

"I do remember something of this, now I come to think of it," he said.
"There were some legal proceedings in connection with this disappearance,
I believe, some years ago."

"Yes, sir--they were in the newspapers," asserted the old landlady. "But
of course, those of us about here knew of how things stood long before
that. Lord Marketstoke went away, as I have said. It was known that he