Too much given to act upon impulse, allowing himself no time to ascertain or to inquire whether the story might be correct or not, John Massingbird took a berth in the first ship advertised for home.  He possessed very little more money than would pay for his passage; he gave himself no concern how he was to get back to Australia, or how exist in England, should the news prove incorrect, but started away off-hand.  Providing for the future had never been made a trouble by John Massingbird.

He sailed, and he arrived safely.  But, once in England, it was necessary to proceed rather cautiously; and John, careless and reckless though he was, could not ignore the expediency of so acting.  There were certain reasons why it would not be altogether prudent to show himself in the neighbourhood of Verner’s Pride, unless his pocket were weighty enough to satisfy sundry claims which would inevitably flock in upon him.  Were he sure that he was the legitimate master of Verner’s Pride, he would have driven up in a coach-and-six, with flying flags and streamers to the horses’ heads, and so have announced his arrival in triumph. Not being sure, he preferred to feel his way, and this could not be done by arriving openly.

There was one place where he knew he could count upon being sheltered, while the way was “felt;” and this was Giles Roy’s.  Roy would be true to him; would conceal him if need were; and help him off again, did Verner’s Pride, for him, prove a myth.  This thought John Massingbird put in practice, arriving one dark night at Roy’s, and startling Mrs. Roy nearly to death.  Whatever fanciful ghosts the woman may have seen before, she never doubted that she saw a real ghost now.

His first question, naturally, was about the will.  Roy told him it was perfectly true that a will had been made in his favour; but the will had been superseded by a codicil.  And he related the circumstance of that codicil’s mysterious loss.  Was it found?  John eagerly asked.  Ah! there Roy could not answer him; he was at a nonplus; he was unable to say whether the codicil had been found or not.  A rumour had gone about Deerham, some time subsequently to the loss, that it had been found, but Roy had never come to the rights of it.  John Massingbird stared as he heard him say this.  Then, couldn’t he tell whether he was the heir or not? whether Lionel Verner held it by established right or by wrong? he asked.  And Roy shook his head—­he could not.

Under these uncertainties, Mr. John Massingbird did not see his way particularly clear.  Either to stop, or to go.  If he stopped, and showed himself, he might be unpleasantly assured that the true heir of Verner’s Pride inhabited Verner’s Pride; if he went back to Australia, the no less mortifying fact might come out afterwards, that he was the heir to Verner’s Pride, and had run away from his own.