“I tied it up,” he said, “with the parcel, with red tape.  Very well—­we must do without it.  Now, Mr. Arbuthnot, my plan is this.  First, I will dictate the letter.  This will give you the outlines of the story.  Next, I will send you to—­to my old customer, who can tell you my son-in-law’s real name.  And then I will describe his coat-of-arms.  My memory was never so clear and good as I feel it to-day.  Strange that last night I seemed, for the moment, to forget everything!  Ha, ha!  Ridiculous, wasn’t it?  I suppose—­But there is no accounting for these queer things.  Perhaps I was disappointed to find nothing in the packet.  Do you think, Mr. Arbuthnot, that I—­” Here he began to tremble.  “Do you think that I dreamed it all?  Old men think strange things.  Perhaps—­”

“Let us try to remember the letter, Mr. Emblem.”

“Yes, yes—­certainly—­the letter.  Why it went—­ahem!—­as follows—­”

* * * * *

Arnold laid down the pen in despair.  The poor old man was mad.  He had poured out the wildest farrago without sense, coherence, or story.

“So much for the letter, Mr. Arbuthnot.”  He was mad without doubt, yet he knew Arnold, and knew, too, why he was in the house.  “Ah, I knew it would come back to me.  Strange if it did not.  Why I read that letter once every quarter or so for eighteen years.  It is a part of myself.  I could not forget it.”

“And the name of your son-in-law’s old friend?”

“Oh, yes, the name!”

He gave some name, which might have been the lost name, but as Mr. Emblem changed it the next moment, and forgot it again the moment after, it was doubtful; certainly not much to build upon.

“And the coat-of-arms?”

“We are getting on famously, are we not?  The coat, sir, was as follows.”

He proceeded to describe an impossible coat—­a coat which might have been drawn by a man absolutely ignorant of science.

All this took a couple of hours.  It was now eight o’clock.

“Thank you, Mr. Emblem,” said Arnold.  “I have no doubt now that we shall somehow bring Iris to her own again, in spite of your loss.  Shall we go upstairs and have some breakfast?”

“It is all right, Iris,” cried the old man gleefully.  “It is all right.  I have remembered everything, and Mr. Arbuthnot will go out presently and secure your inheritance.”

Iris looked at Arnold.

“Yes, dear,” she said.  “You shall have your breakfast.  And then you shall tell me all about it when Arnold goes; and you will take a holiday, won’t you—­because I am twenty-one to-day?”

“Aha!” He was quite cheerful and mirthful, because he had recovered his memory.  “Aha, my dear, all is well!  You are twenty-one, and I am seventy-five; and Mr. Arbuthnot will go and bring home the—­the inheritance.  And I shall sit here all day long.  It was a good dream that came to me this morning, was it not?  Quite a voice from Heaven, which said:  ‘Get up and write down the letter while you remember it.’  I got up; I found by the—­by the merest accident, Mr. Arbuthnot on the stairs, and we have arranged everything for you—­everything.”