"Not the faintest notion!" answered Viner dismally. "I wondered!"

"I was looking," replied Mr. Pawle with a faint chuckle, "to see if I
could find any tombstones or monuments in this churchyard bearing the
name Ashton. There isn't one! I take it from that significant fact that
Ashton didn't come down here to visit the graves of his kindred. But now
come into the church--Mrs. Summers told me this morning that there's a
chapel here in which the Cave-Gray family have been interred for two or
three centuries. Let's have a look at it."

Viner, who had a dilettante love of ancient architecture, was immediately
lost in admiration of the fine old structure into which he and his
companion presently stepped. He stood staring at the high rood, the fine
old rood screen, the beauty of the clustered columns--had he been alone,
and on any other occasion, he would have spent the morning in wandering
around nave and aisles and transepts. But Mr. Pawle, severely practical,
at once made for the northeast chapel; and Viner, after another glance
round, was forced to follow him.

"The Ellingham Chapel!" whispered the old solicitor as they passed a fine
old stone screen which Viner mentally registered as fifteenth-century.
"No end of Cave-Grays laid here. What a profusion of monuments!"

Viner began to examine those monuments as well as the gloom of the
November morning and the dark-painted glass of the windows would permit.
And before very long he turned to his companion, who was laboriously
reading the inscription on a great box-tomb which stood against the
north wall.

"I say!" he whispered. "Here's a curious fact which, in view of what we