“Certainly not; and before twelve days are past, you will have returned from Ireland.  The agreement may be, I thought, of use with Cunningham or Mullins.  If they have been conspiring together, they will scarcely admire the light in which you can place the arrangement, as affording proof that he means to keep the lion’s share of the reward to himself.”

“Exactly.  At all events we shall get at the truth, whatever it be.”

The same evening Mr. Flint started for Dublin via Holyhead.

I received in due course a letter from him dated the day after his arrival there.  It was anything but a satisfactory one.  The date on the grave-stone had been truly represented, and Mullins who erected it was a highly respectable man.  Flint had also seen the grave-digger, but could make nothing out of him.  There was no regular register of deaths kept in Swords except that belonging to Cunningham; and the minister who buried Gosford, and who lived at that time in Dublin, had been dead some time.  This was disheartening and melancholy enough; and, as if to give our unfortunate client the coup-de-grace, Mr. Jackson, junior, marched into the office just after I had read it, to say that, having been referred by Lady Seyton to us for explanations, with respect to a statement made by a Mr. Edward Chilton to the Honorable James Kingston, for whom they, the Messrs. Jackson, were now acting, by which it appeared that the said Honorable James Kingston was, in fact, the true Earl of Seyton, he, Mr. Jackson, junior, would be happy to hear what I had to say upon the subject!  It needed but this.  Chilton had, as I feared he would, after finding we had been consulted, sold his secret, doubtless advantageously, to the heir-at-law.  There was still, however, a chance that something favorable might turn up, and, as I had no notion of throwing that chance away, I carelessly replied that we had reason to believe Chilton’s story was a malicious fabrication, and that we should of course throw on them the onus of judicial proof that Gosford was still alive when the late earl’s marriage was solemnized.  Finally, however, to please Mr. Jackson, who professed to be very anxious, for the lady’s sake, to avoid unnecessary eclat, and to arrange the affair as quietly as possible, I agreed to meet him at Lady Seyton’s in four days from that time, and hear the evidence upon which he relied.  This could not at all events render our position worse; and it was, meanwhile, agreed that the matter should be kept as far as possible profoundly secret.

Three days passed without any further tidings from Mr. Flint, and I vehemently feared that his journey had proved a fruitless one, when, on the evening previous to the day appointed for the conference at Seyton House, a hackney-coach drove rapidly up to the office door, and out popped Mr. Flint, followed by two strangers, whom he very watchfully escorted into the house.

“Mr. Patrick Mullins and Mr. Pierce Cunningham,” said Flint as he shook hands with me in a way which, in conjunction with the merry sparkle of his eyes, and the boisterous tone of his voice, assured me all was right.  “Mr. Pierce Cunningham will sleep here to-night,” he added; “so Collins had better engage a bed out.”