In 1817, there was living at Enniskillen, in Ireland, an ordnance store-keeper called Captain Hans-Francis Hastings, and this gentleman there made the acquaintance of a solicitor named Mr. Nugent Bell, who, like himself, was ardently devoted to field-sports.  The friendship subsisting between the pair was of the closest kind; and it having been whispered about that the captain had made a sort of side-claim to the earldom of Huntingdon, Mr. Bell questioned him about the truth of the rumour.  As it turned out, the circumstantial part of the story was totally false; but it nevertheless was a fact that Captain Hastings had a faint idea that he had some right to the dormant peerage.  However, as he said himself, he had been sent early to sea, had been long absent from his native country, and had little really valuable information as to his family history.  He said that his uncle, the Rev. Theophilus Hastings, rector of Great and Little Leke, had always endeavoured to impress upon him that he was the undoubted heir to the title, and that fourteen years previously he had himself so far entertained the notion as to pay a visit to College of Arms in London, to learn the proper steps to be taken to establish his claim; but that when he was told that the cost of the process would be at least three thousand guineas, he abandoned all notion of legal proceedings, which were simply impossible because of his scanty resources.  Mrs. Hastings, who was present during the conversation, contributed all that she knew respecting the whimsical old clergyman who had so carefully instructed his nephew to consider himself a peer in prospective, and particularly pointed out that the old gentleman entertained an irreconcileable hatred of the Marquis of Hastings.  It seemed also that some time after the last earl’s death, the Rev. Mr. Hastings had assumed the title of Earl of Huntingdon, and that a stone pillar had been erected in front of the parsonage-house at Leke, on which there was a metal plate bearing a Latin inscription, to the effect that he was the eleventh Earl of Huntingdon, godson of Theophilus the ninth earl, and entitled to the earldom by descent.

These reminiscences and suspicions could not have been poured into more attentive ears.  Mr. Bell had long been a student of heraldry, and saw an opportunity not only of benefiting his friend, but of signalizing himself.  Accordingly he undertook to investigate the matter, and offered, in the event of failure, to bear the whole of the attendant expense, simply premising that, if he succeeded, he should be recouped.  On the 1st of July a letter passed between Captain Hastings and Mr. Bell, which shows the sentiments of both parties.  This is it:—­

        “MY DEAR BELL,—­I will pay you all costs in case you succeed in
     proving me the legal heir to the Earldom of Huntingdon.  If not, the
     risk is your own; and I certainly will not be answerable for any
     expense you may incur