to no congregation, and the church itself was becoming ruinous, the old parish was abolished, and merged in the neighbouring parish of Felside, whose rector, my friend Mr. Longfield, has the old Walholm registers in his possession.  When he read of the Phillips inquest, and what I’d said then, he thought of those registers and turned them up, out of a chest where they’d lain for thirty years anyway; and he at once found the entry of the marriage of one Michael Carstairs with a Mary Smeaton, which was by licence, and performed by the last vicar of Walholm—­it was, as a matter of fact, the very last marriage which ever took place in the old church.  And I should say,” concluded Mr. Ridley, “that it was what one would call a secret wedding—­secret, at any rate, in so far as this:  as it was by licence, and as the old church was a most lonely and isolated place, far away from anywhere, even then there’d be no one to know of it beyond the officiating clergyman and the witnesses, who could, of course, be asked to hold their tongues about the matter, as they probably were.  But there’s the copy of the entry in the old register.”

Smeaton and I looked eagerly over the slip of paper which Mr. Ridley handed across.  And he, to whom it meant such a vast deal, asked but one question: 

“I wonder if I can find out anything about Mary Smeaton!”

“Mr. Longfield has already made some quiet inquiries amongst two or three old people of the neighbourhood on that point,” remarked Mr. Ridley.  “The two witnesses to the marriage are both dead—­years ago.  But there are folk living in the neighbourhood who remember Mary Smeaton.  The facts are these:  she was a very handsome young woman, not a native of the district, who came in service to one of the farms on the Cheviots, and who, by a comparison of dates, left her place somewhat suddenly very soon after that marriage.”

Smeaton turned to Mr. Lindsey in the same quiet fashion.

“What do you make of all this?” he asked.

“Plain as a pikestaff,” answered Mr. Lindsey in his most confident manner.  “Michael Carstairs fell in love with this girl and married her, quietly—­as Mr. Ridley says, seeing that the marriage was by licence, it’s probable, nay, certain, that nobody but the parson and the witnesses ever knew anything about it.  I take it that immediately after the marriage Michael Carstairs and his wife went off to America, and that he, for reasons of his own, dropped his own proper patronymic and adopted hers.  And,” he ended, slapping his knee, “I’ve no doubt that you’re the child of that marriage, that your real name is Gavin Carstairs, and that you’re the successor to the baronetcy, and—­the real owner of Hathercleugh,—­as I shall have pleasure in proving.”

“We shall see,” said Smeaton, quietly as ever.  “But—­there’s a good deal to do before we get to that, Mr. Lindsey!  The present holder, or claimant, for example?  What of him?”