Spargo made his best bow.

“Sir,” he said, “I am greatly obliged by your kind invitation, and I shall consider it an honour to wait upon you to the moment.”

Accordingly, at five minutes to nine next morning, Spargo found himself in an old-fashioned parlour, looking out upon a delightful garden, gay with summer flowers, and being introduced by Mr. Quarterpage, Senior, to Mr. Quarterpage, Junior—­a pleasant gentleman of sixty, always referred to by his father as something quite juvenile—­and to Miss Quarterpage, a young-old lady of something a little less elderly than her brother, and to a breakfast table bounteously spread with all the choice fare of the season.  Mr. Quarterpage, Senior, was as fresh and rosy as a cherub; it was a revelation to Spargo to encounter so old a man who was still in possession of such life and spirits, and of such a vigorous and healthy appetite.

Naturally, the talk over the breakfast table ran on Spargo’s possession of the old silver ticket, upon which subject it was evident Mr. Quarterpage was still exercising his intellect.  And Spargo, who had judged it well to enlighten his host as to who he was, and had exhibited a letter with which the editor of the Watchman had furnished him, told how in the exercise of his journalistic duties he had discovered the ticket in the lining of an old box.  But he made no mention of the Marbury matter, being anxious to see first whither Mr. Quarterpage’s revelations would lead him.

“You have no idea, Mr. Spargo,” said the old gentleman, when, breakfast over, he and Spargo were closeted together in a little library in which were abundant evidences of the host’s taste in sporting matters; “you have no idea of the value which was attached to the possession of one of those silver tickets.  There is mine, as you see, securely framed and just as securely fastened to the wall.  Those fifty silver tickets, my dear sir, were made when our old race-meeting was initiated, in the year 1781.  They were made in the town by a local silversmith, whose great-great-grandson still carries on the business.  The fifty were distributed amongst the fifty leading burgesses of the town to be kept in their families for ever—­nobody ever anticipated in those days that our race-meeting would ever be discontinued.  The ticket carried great privileges.  It made its holder, and all members of his family, male and female, free of the stands, rings, and paddocks.  It gave the holder himself and his eldest son, if of age, the right to a seat at our grand race banquet—­at which, I may tell you, Mr. Spargo, Royalty itself has been present in the good old days.  Consequently, as you see, to be the holder of a silver ticket was to be somebody.”

“And when the race-meeting fell through?” asked Spargo.  “What then?”