of a claim, he inclined to think, and should be supposed to come from a personage having cause either to fear him or to assist him.  He set my speculations astray by hinting that the request for the stopping of the case might be a blind.  A gift of money, he said shrewdly, was a singularly weak method of inducing a man to stop the suit of a life-time.  I thought of Lady Edbury; but her income was limited, and her expenditure was not of Lady Sampleman, but it was notorious that she loved her purse as well as my aunt Dorothy, and was even more, in the squire’s phrase, ’a petticoated parsimony.’  Anna Penrhys appeared the likelier, except for the fact that the commencement of the annuity was long before our acquaintance with her.  I tried her on the subject.  Her amazement was without a shadow of reserve.  ’It ‘s Welsh, it’s not English,’ she remarked.  I knew no Welshwoman save Anna.

‘Do you know the whole of his history?’ said she.  Possibly one of the dozen unknown episodes in it might have furnished the clue, I agreed with her.

The sight of twenty-one thousand pounds placed to my credit in the Funds assuaged my restless spirit of investigation.  Letters from the squire and my aunt Dorothy urged me to betake myself to Riversley, there finally to decide upon what my course should be.

‘Now that you have the money, pray,’ St. Parsimony wrote,—­’pray be careful of it.  Do not let it be encroached on.  Remember it is to serve one purpose.  It should be guarded strictly against every appeal for aid,’ etc., with much underlining.

My grandfather returned the papers.  His letter said ’I shall not break my word.  Please to come and see me before you take steps right or left.’

So here was the dawn again.

I could in a day or two start for Sarkeld.  Meanwhile, to give my father a lesson, I discharged a number of bills, and paid off the bond to which Edbury’s name was attached.  My grandfather, I knew, was too sincerely and punctiliously a gentleman in practical conduct to demand a further inspection of my accounts.  These things accomplished, I took the train for Riversley, and proceeded from the station to Durstan, where I knew Heriot to be staying.  Had I gone straight to my grandfather, there would have been another story to tell.

CHAPTER XLV

WITHIN AN INCH OF MY LIFE

A single tent stood in a gully running from one of the gravel-pits of the heath, near an iron-red rillet, and a girl of Kiomi’s tribe leaned over the lazy water at half length, striking it with her handkerchief.  At a distance of about twice a stone’s-throw from the new carriage-road between Durstan and Bulsted, I fancied from old recollections she might be Kiomi herself.  This was not the time for her people to be camping on Durstan.  Besides, I feared it improbable that one would find her in any of the tracks of her people.  The noise of the wheels brought