particular interest in keeping him out of his rights. Such things have
been known. I want to go into all that. But now here's another matter. If
Ashton really was the missing Lord Marketstoke, who is this girl whom he
put forward as his ward, to whom he's left his considerable fortune, and
about whom nobody knows anything? I've already told you there isn't a
single paper or document about her that I can discover. Was he really her
guardian?"

"Has this anything to do with it?" asked Viner. "Does it come into
things?"

Mr. Pawle did not answer for a moment; he appeared to have struck a new
vein of thought and to be exploring it deeply.

"In certain events, it would come into it pretty strongly!" he muttered
at last. "I'll tell you why, later on. Now I'm for bed--and first thing
after breakfast, in the morning, Viner, we'll go to work."

Viner had little idea of what the old solicitor meant as regards going to
work; it seemed to him that for all practical purposes they were already
in a maze out of which there seemed no easy way. And he was not at all
sure of what they were doing when, breakfast being over next morning, Mr.
Pawle conducted him across the square to the old four-square churchyard,
and for half an hour walked him up one path and down another and in and
around the ancient yew-trees and gravestones.

"Do you know what I've been looking for, Viner?" asked Mr. Pawle at
last as he turned towards the church porch. "I was looking for
something, you know."