The street which Mat had chosen for his place of residence in London,
was situated in a densely populous, and by no means respectable
neighborhood. In Kirk Street the men of the fustian-jacket and seal-skin
cap clustered tumultuous round the lintels of the gin-shop doors. Here
ballad-bellowing, and organ grinding, and voices of costermongers,
singing of poor men’s luxuries, never ceased all through the hum of
day, and penetrated far into the frowzy repose of latest night. Here, on
Saturday evenings especially, the butcher smacked with appreciating
hand the fat carcasses that hung around him; and flourishing his steel,
roared aloud to every woman who passed the shop door with a basket, to
come in and buy--buy--buy! Here, with foul frequency, the language of
the natives was interspersed with such words as reporters indicate in
the newspapers by an expressive black line; and on this “beat,” more
than on most others, the night police were chosen from men of mighty
strength to protect the sober part of the street community, and of
notable cunning to persuade the drunken part to retire harmlessly
brawling into the seclusion of their own homes.
Such was the place in which Mat had set up his residence, after twenty
years of wandering amid the wilds of the great American Continent.
Never was tenant of any order or degree known to make such conditions
with a landlord as were made by this eccentric stranger. Every household
convenience with which the people at the lodgings could offer to
accommodate him, Mat considered to be a domestic nuisance which it was
particularly desirable to get rid of. He stipulated that nobody should
be allowed to clean his room but himself; that the servant-of-all-work
should never attempt to make his bed, or offer to put sheets on it, or
venture to cook him a morsel of dinner when he stopped at home; and
that he should be free to stay away unexpectedly for days and nights
together, if he chose, without either landlord or landlady presuming to
be anxious or to make inquiries about him, as long as they had his rent
in their pockets. This rent he willingly covenanted to pay beforehand,
week by week, as long as his stay lasted; and he was also ready to fee
the servant occasionally, provided she would engage solemnly “not to
upset his temper by doing anything for him.”
The proprietor of the house (and tobacco-shop) was at first extremely
inclined to be distrustful; but as he was likewise extremely familiar
with poverty, he was not proof against the auriferous halo which the
production of a handful of bright sovereigns shed gloriously over the
oddities of the new lodger. The bargain was struck; and Mat went away
directly to fetch his personal baggage.
After an absence of some little time, he returned with a large corn-sack
on his back, and a long rifle in his hand. This was his luggage.
First putting the rifle on his bed, in the back room, he cleared away
all the little second-hand furniture with which the front room was
decorated; packing the three rickety chairs together in one corner, and
turning up the cracked round table in another. Then, untying a piece of
cord which secured the mouth of the corn-sack, he emptied it over his
shoulder into the middle of the room--just (as the landlady afterwards
said) as if it was coals coming in instead of luggage. Among the things
which fell out on the floor in a heap, were--some bearskins and a
splendid buffalo-hide, neatly packed; a pipe, two red flannel shirts, a
tobacco-pouch, and an Indian blanket; a leather bag, a gunpowder flask,
two squares of yellow soap, a bullet mold, and a nightcap; a tomahawk, a
paper of nails, a scrubbing-brush, a hammer, and an old gridiron. Having
emptied the sack, Mat took up the buffalo hide, and spread it out on
his bed, with a very expressive sneer at the patchwork counterpane and
meager curtains. He next threw down the bear skins, with the empty sack
under them, in an unoccupied corner; propped up the leather bag between
two angles of the wall; took his pipe from the floor; left everything
else lying in the middle of the room; and, sitting down on the bearskins
with his back against the bag, told the astonished landlord that he was
quite settled and comfortable, and would thank him to go down stairs,
and send up a pound of the strongest tobacco he had in the shop.
Mat’s subsequent proceedings during the rest of the day--especially such
as were connected with his method of laying in a stock of provisions,
and cooking his own dinner--exhibited the same extraordinary disregard
of all civilized precedent which had marked his first entry into the
lodgings. After he had dined, he took a nap on his bear skins; woke up
grumbling at the close air and the confined room; smoked a long series
of pipes, looking out of window all the time with quietly observant,
constantly attentive eyes; and, finally, rising to the climax of all
his previous oddities, came down when the tobacco shop was being shut up
after the closing of the neighboring theater, and coolly asked which was
his nearest way into the country, as he wanted to clear his head, and
stretch his legs, by making a walking night of it in the fresh air.
He began the next morning by cleaning both his rooms thoroughly with his
own hands; and seemed to enjoy the occupation mightily in his own grim,
grave way. His dining, napping, smoking, and observant study of the
street view from his window, followed as on the previous day. But at
night, instead of setting forth into the country as before, he wandered
into the streets; and, in the course of his walk, happened to pass the
door of the Snuggery. What happened to him there is already known; but
what became of him afterwards remains to be seen.
On leaving Zack, he walked straight on; not slackening his pace, not
noticing whither he went, not turning to go back till daybreak. It
was past nine o’clock before he presented himself at the tobacco-shop,
bringing in with him a goodly share of mud and wet from the thawing
ground and rainy sky outside. His long walk did not seem to have
relieved the uneasiness of mind which had induced him to separate
so suddenly from Zack. He talked almost perpetually to himself in a
muttering, incoherent way; his heavy brow was contracted, and the scars
of the old wounds on his face looked angry and red. The first thing
he did was to make some inquiries of his landlord relating to railway
traveling, and to the part of London in which a certain terminus that
he had been told of was situated. Finding it not easy to make him
understand any directions connected with this latter point, the
shopkeeper suggested sending for a cab to take him to the railway. He
briefly assented to that arrangement; occupying the time before the
vehicle arrived, in walking sullenly backwards and forwards over the
pavement in front of the shop door.
When the cab came to take him up, he insisted, with characteristic
regardlessness of appearances, on riding upon the roof, because he could
get more air to blow over him, and more space for stretching his legs
in, there than inside. Arriving in this irregular and vagabond fashion
at the terminus, he took his ticket for DIBBLEDEAN, a quiet little
market town in one of the midland counties.
When he was set down at the station, he looked about him rather
perplexedly at first; but soon appeared to recognize a road, visible
at some little distance, which led to the town; and towards which he
immediately directed his steps, scorning all offers of accommodation
from the local omnibus.
It did not happen to be market day; and the thaw looked even more dreary
at Dibbledean than it looked in London. Down the whole perspective of
the High Street there appeared only three human figures--a woman in
pattens; a child under a large umbrella; and a man with a hamper on his
back, walking towards the yard of the principal inn.
Mat had slackened his pace more and more as he approached the
town, until he slackened it altogether at last, by coming to a dead
stand-still under the walls of the old church, which stood at one
extremity of the High Street, in what seemed to be the suburban district
of Dibbledean. He waited for some time, looking over the low parapet
wall which divided the churchyard from the road--then slowly
approached a gate leading to a path among the grave-stones--stopped at
it--apparently changed his purpose--and, turning off abruptly, walked up
the High Street.
He did not pause again till he arrived opposite a long, low, gabled
house, evidently one of the oldest buildings in the place, though
brightly painted and whitewashed, to look as new and unpicturesque as
possible. The basement story was divided into two shops; which, however,
proclaimed themselves as belonging now, and having belonged also in
former days, to one and the same family. Over the larger of the two was
painted in letters of goodly size:--
_Bradford and Son (late Joshua Grice), Linendrapers, Hosiers, &c., &c._
The board on which these words were traced was continued over the
smaller shop, where it was additionally superscribed thus:--
_Mrs. Bradford (late Joanna Grice), Milliner and Dressmaker._
Regardless of rain, and droppings from eaves that trickled heavily down
his hat and coat, Mat stood motionless, reading and re-reading these
inscriptions from the opposite side of the way. Though the whole man,
from top to toe, was the very impersonation of firmness, he nevertheless
hesitated most unnaturally now. At one moment he seemed to be on the
point of entering the shop before him--at another, he turned half round
towards the churchyard which he had left behind him. At last he decided
to go back to the churchyard, and retraced his steps accordingly.
He entered quickly by the gate at which he had delayed before; and
pursued the path among the graves a little way. Then striking off over
the grass, after a moment’s consideration and looking about him, he
wound his course hither and thither among the turf mounds, and stopped
suddenly at a plain flat tombstone, raised horizontally above the
earth by a foot or so of brickwork. Bending down over it, he read the
characters engraven on the slab.
There were four inscriptions, all of the simplest and shortest kind,
comprising nothing but a record of the names, ages, and birth and death
dates of the dead who lay beneath. The first two inscriptions notified
the deaths of children:--“Joshua Grice, son of Joshua and Susan Grice,
of this parish, aged four years;” and “Susan Grice, daughter of the
above, aged thirteen years.” The next death recorded was the mother’s:
and the last was the father’s, at the age of sixty-two. Below this
followed a quotation from the New Testament:--_Come unto me all ye that
are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest._ It was on these
lines, and on the record above them of the death of Joshua Grice the
elder, that the eyes of the lonely reader rested longest; his lips
murmuring several times, as he looked down on the letters:--“He lived to
be an old man--he lived to be an old man after all!”
There was sufficient vacant space left towards the bottom of the
tombstone for two or three more inscriptions; and it appeared as if Mat
expected to have seen more. He looked intently at the vacant space, and
measured it roughly with his fingers, comparing it with the space above,
which was occupied by letters. “Not there, at any rate!” he said to
himself, as he left the churchyard, and walked back to the town.
This time he entered the double shop--the hosiery division of
it--without hesitation. No one was there, but the young man who served
behind the counter. And right glad the young man looked, having been
long left without a soul to speak to on that rainy morning, to see some
one--even a stranger with an amazing skull-cap under his hat--enter the
shop at last.
What could he serve the gentleman with? The gentleman had not come to
buy. He only desired to know whether Joanna Grice, who used to keep the
dressmaker’s shop, was still living?
Still living, certainly! the young man replied, with brisk civility.
Miss Grice, whose brother once had the business now carried on by
Bradford and Son, still resided in the town; and was a very curious old
person, who never went out, and let nobody inside her doors. Most of
her old friends were dead; and those who were still alive she had broken
with. She was full of fierce, wild ways; was suspected of being crazy;
and was execrated by the boys of Dibbledean as an “old tiger-cat.” In
all probability, her intellects were a little shaken, years ago, by a
dreadful scandal in the family, which quite crushed them down, being
very respectable, religious people--
At this point the young man was interrupted, in a very uncivil manner,
by the stranger, who desired to hear nothing about the scandal, but who
had another question to ask. This question seemed rather a difficult one
to put; for he began it two or three times, in two or three different
forms of words, and failed to get on with it. At last, he ended by
asking, generally, whether any other members of old Mr. Grice’s family
were still alive.
For a moment or so the shopman was stupid and puzzled, and asked what
other members the gentleman meant. Old Mrs. Grice had died some time
ago; and there had been two children who died young, and whose names
were in the churchyard. “Did the gentleman mean the second daughter, who
lived and grew up beautiful, and was, as the story went, the cause of
all the scandal? If so, the young person ran away, and died miserably
somehow--nobody knew how; and was supposed to have been buried like a
pauper somewhere--nobody knew where, unless it was Miss Grice--”
The young man stopped and looked perplexed. A sudden change had passed
over the strange gentleman’s face. His swarthy cheeks had turned to a
cold clay color, through which his two scars seemed to burn fiercer than
ever, like streaks of fire. His heavy hand and arm trembled a little
as he leaned against the counter. Was he going to be taken ill? No: he
walked at once from the counter to the door--turned round there, and
asked where Joanna Grice lived. The young man answered, the second
turning to the right, down a street, which ended in a lane of cottages.
Miss Grice’s was the last cottage on the left hand; but he could assure
the gentleman that it would be quite useless to go there, for she let
nobody in. The gentleman thanked him, and went, nevertheless.
“I didn’t think it would have took me so,” Mat said, walking quickly up
the street; “and it wouldn’t if I’d heard it anywhere else. But I’m
not the man I was, now I’m in the old place again. Over twenty year of
hardening, don’t seem to have hardened me yet!”
He followed the directions given him, correctly enough, arrived at the
last cottage on his left hand, and tried the garden gate. It was locked;
and there was no bell to ring. But the paling was low, and Mat was not
scrupulous. He got over it, and advanced to the cottage door. It opened,
like other doors in the country, merely by turning the handle of the
lock. He went in without any hesitation, and entered the first room
into which the passage led him. It was a small parlor; and, at the back
window, which looked out on a garden, sat Joanna Grice, a thin, dwarfish
old woman, poring over a big book which looked like a Bible. She started
from her chair, as she heard the sound of footsteps, and tottered up
fiercely, with wild wandering grey eyes and horny threatening hands,
to meet the intruder. He let her come close to him; then mentioned a
name--pronouncing it twice, very distinctly.
She paused instantly, livid pale, with gaping lips, and arms hanging
rigid at her side; as if that name, or the voice in which it had been
uttered, had frozen up in a moment all the little life left in her.
Then she moved back slowly, groping with her hands like one in the
dark--back, till she touched the wall of the room Against this she
leaned, trembling violently; not speaking a word; her wild eyes staring
panic-stricken on the man who was confronting her.
He sat down unbidden, and asked if she did not remember him. No answer
was given; no movement made that might serve instead of an answer. He
asked again; a little impatiently this time. She nodded her head and
stared at him--still speechless, still trembling.
He told her what he had heard at the shop; and using the shopman’s
phrases, asked whether it was true that the daughter of old Mr. Grice,
who was the cause of all the scandal in the family, had died long since,
away from her home, and in a miserable way?
There was something in his look, as he spoke, which seemed to oblige her
to answer against her will. She said Yes; and trembled more violently
than ever.
He clasped his hands together; his head drooped a little; dark shadows
seemed to move over his bent face; and the scars of the old wounds
deepened to a livid violet hue.
His silence and hesitation seemed to inspire Joanna Grice with sudden
confidence and courage. She moved a little away from the wall, and a
gleam of triumph lightened over her face, as she reiterated her last
answer of her own accord. “Yes! the wretch who ruined the good name
of the family _was_ dead--dead, and buried far off, in some grave by
herself--not there, in the churchyard with her father and mother--no,
thank God, not there!”
He looked up at her instantly, when she said those words, There was
some warning influence in his eye, as it rested on her, which sent her
cowering back again to her former place against the wall. Mentioning
the name for the first time, he asked sternly where Mary was buried. The
reply--doled out doggedly and slowly, forced from her word by word--was,
that Mary was buried among strangers, as she deserved to be--at a place
called Bangbury--far away in the next county, where she died, and where
money was sent to bury her.
His manner became less roughly imperative; his eyes softened; his voice
saddened in tone, when he spoke again. And yet, the next question that
he put to Joanna Grice seemed to pierce her to the quick, to try her
to the heart, as no questioning had tried her before. The muscles were
writhing on her haggard face, her breath burst from her in quick, fierce
pantings, as he asked plainly, whether it was only suspicion, or really
the truth, that Mary was with child when she left her home?
No answer was given to him. He repeated the question, and insisted on
having one. Was it suspicion, or truth? The reply hissed out at him in
one whispered word--Truth.
Was the child born alive?
The answer came again in the same harsh whisper--Yes: born alive.
What became of it?
She never saw it--never asked about it--never knew. While she replied
thus, her whispering accents changed, and rose sullenly to hoarse,
distinct tones. But it was not till the questioner spoke to her once
more that the smothered fury flashed out into flaming rage. Then,
even as he raised his head and opened his lips, she staggered, with
outstretched arms, up to the table at which she had been reading when he
came in; and struck her bony hands on the open Bible; and swore by the
Word of Truth in that Book, that she would answer him no more.
He rose calmly; and with something of contempt in his look, approached
the table and spoke. But his voice was drowned by hers, bursting from
her in screams of fury. No! no! no! Not a word more! How dare he come
there, with his shameless face and his threatening eyes, and make her
speak of what should never have passed her lips again--never till she
went up to render her account at the Judgment Seat! Relations! let him
not speak to her of relations. The only kindred she ever cared to own,
lay heart-broken under the great stone in the churchyard. Relations! if
they all came to life again this very minute, what could she have to do
with them, whose only relation was Death? Yes; Death, that was father,
mother, brother, sister to her now! Death, that was waiting to take her
in God’s good time. What! would he stay on in spite of her? stay after
she had sworn not to answer him another word?
Yes; he was resolved to stay--and resolved to know more. Had Mary left
nothing behind her, on the day when she fled from her home?
Some suddenly-conceived resolution seemed to calm the first fury of
Joanna Grice’s passion, while he said those words. She stretched out her
hand quickly, and griped him by the arm, and looked up in his face with
a wicked exultation in her wild eyes.
He was bent on knowing what that ruined wretch left behind her? Well! he
should see for himself!
Between the leaves of Joanna Grice’s Bible there was a key, which seemed
to be used as a marker. She took it out, and led the way, with toilsome
step, and hands outstretched for support to the wall on one side and the
banisters on the other, up the one flight of stairs which communicated
with the bed-room story of the cottage.
He followed close behind her: and was standing by her side, when she
opened a door, and pointed into a room, telling him to take what he
found there, and then go--she cared not whither, so long as he went from
her.
She descended the stairs again, as he entered the room. There was a
close, faint, airless smell in it. Cobwebs, pendulous and brown with
dirt, hung from the ceiling. The grimy window-panes saddened all the
light that poured through them faintly. He looked round him, and saw no
furniture anywhere; no sign that the room had ever been lived in, ever
entered even, for years and years past. He looked again, more carefully:
and detected, in one dim corner, something covered with dust and dirt,
which looked like a small box.
He pulled it out towards the window. Dust flew from it in clouds.
Loathsome, crawling creatures crept from under it and from off it. He
stirred it with his foot still nearer to the faint light, and saw that
it was a common deal-box, corded. He looked closer, and through cobwebs,
and dead insects, and foul stains of all kinds, spelt out a name that
was painted on it: MARY GRICE.
At the sight of that name, and of the pollution which covered it, he
paused, silent and thoughtful; and, at the same moment, heard the parlor
door below, locked. He stooped hastily, took up the box by the cord
round it, and left the room. His hand touched a substance, as he grasped
the cord, which did not feel like wood. Examining the box by the clearer
light falling on the landing from a window in the roof, he discovered a
letter nailed to the cover. There was something written on it; but the
paper was dusty, the ink was faded by time, and the characters were hard
to decipher. By dint of perseverance, however, he made out from them
this inscription: “Justification of my conduct towards my niece: to be
read after my death. Joanna Grice.”
As he passed the parlor door, he heard her voice, reading. He stopped
and listened. The words that reached his ears seemed familiar to them;
and yet he knew not, at first, what book they came from. He listened a
little longer; his recollections of his boyhood and of home helped him;
and he knew that the book from which Joanna Grice was reading aloud to
herself was the Bible.
His face darkened, and he went out quickly into the garden; but stopped
before he reached the paling, and, turning back to the front window of
the parlor, looked in. He saw her sitting with her back to him, with
elbows on the table, and hands working feverishly in her tangled grey
hair. Her voice was still audible; but the words it pronounced could no
longer be distinguished. He waited at the window for a few moments; then
left it suddenly, saying to himself: “I wonder the book don’t strike her
dead!” Those were his only words of farewell. With that thought in his
heart, he turned his back on the cottage, and on Joanna Grice.
He went on through the rain, taking the box with him, and looking about
for some sheltered place in which he could open it. After walking nearly
a mile, he saw an old cattle-shed, a little way off the road--a rotten,
deserted place; but it afforded some little shelter, even yet: so he
entered it.
There was one dry corner left; dry enough, at least, to suit
his purpose. In that he knelt down, and cut the cord round the
box--hesitated before he opened it--and began by tearing away the letter
outside, from the nail that fastened it to the cover.
It was a long letter, written in a close, crabbed hand. He ran his eye
over it impatiently, till his attention was accidentally caught and
arrested by two or three lines, more clearly penned than the rest, near
the middle of a page. For many years he had been unused to reading any
written characters; but he spelt out resolutely the words in the few
lines which first struck his eye, and found that they ran thus:--
“I have now only to add, before proceeding to the miserable confession
of our family dishonor, that I never afterwards saw, and only once heard
of, the man who tempted my niece to commit the deadly sin, which was her
ruin in this world, and will be her ruin in the next.”
Beyond those words, he made no effort to read further. Thrusting the
letter hastily into his pocket, he turned once more to the box.
It was sealed up with strips of tape, but not locked. He forced the lid
open, and saw inside a few simple articles of woman’s wearing apparel;
a little work-box; a lace collar, with the needle and thread still
sticking in it; several letters, here tied up in a packet, there
scattered carelessly; a gaily-bound album; a quantity of dried ferns and
flower leaves that had apparently fallen from between the pages: a
piece of canvas with a slipper-pattern worked on it; and a black dress
waistcoat with some unfinished embroidery on the collar. It was plain to
him, at a first glance, that these things had been thrown into the box
anyhow, and had been left just as they were thrown. For a moment or
two, he kept his eyes fixed on the sad significance of the confusion
displayed before him; then turned away his head, whispering to himself,
mournfully and many times, that name of “Mary,” which he had already
pronounced while in the presence of Joanna Grice. After a little, he
mechanically picked out the letters that lay scattered about the
box; mechanically eyed the broken seals and the addresses on each;
mechanically put them back again unopened, until he came to one which
felt as if it had something inside it. This circumstance stimulated
him into unfolding the enclosure, and examining what the letter might
contain.
Nothing but a piece of paper neatly folded. He undid the folds, and
found part of a lock of hair inside, which he wrapped up again the
moment he saw it, as if anxious to conceal it from view as soon as
possible. The letter he examined more deliberately. It was in a woman’s
handwriting; was directed to “Miss Mary Grice, Dibbledean:” and was only
dated “Bond Street, London. Wednesday.” The post-mark, however, showed
that it had been written many years ago. It was not very long; so he set
himself to the task of making it all out from beginning to end.
This was what he read:--
“MY DEAREST MARY,
“I have just sent you your pretty hair bracelet by the coach, nicely
sealed and packed up by the jeweler. I have directed it to you by your
own name, as I direct this, remembering what you told me about your
father making it a point of honor never to open your letters and
parcels; and forbidding that ugly aunt Joanna of yours, ever to do so
either. I hope you will receive this and the little packet about the
same time.
“I will answer for your thinking the pattern of your bracelet much
improved since the new hair has been worked in with the old. How slyly
you will run away to your own room, and _blush unseen,_ like the flower
in the poem, when you look at it! You may be rather surprised, perhaps,
to see some little gold fastenings introduced as additions; but this,
the jeweler told me, was a matter of necessity. Your poor dear sister’s
hair being the only material of the bracelet, when you sent it up to
me to be altered, was very different from the hair of that faultless
true-love of yours which you also sent to be worked in with it. It was,
in fact, hardly half long enough to plait up properly with poor Susan’s,
from end to end; so the jeweler had to join it with little gold clasps,
as you will see. It is very prettily run in along with the old hair
though. No country jeweler could have done it half as nicely, so you did
well to send it to London after all. I consider myself rather a judge
of these things; and I say positively that it is now the prettiest hair
bracelet I ever saw.
“Do you see him as often as ever? He ought to be true and faithful to
you, when you show how dearly you love him, by mixing his hair with poor
Susan’s, whom you were always so fondly attached to. I say he _ought;_
but _you_ are sure to say he will--and I am quite ready, love, to
believe that you are the wiser of the two.
“I would write more, but have no time. It is just the regular London
season now, and we are worked out of our lives. I envy you dressmakers
in the country; and almost wish I was back again at Dibbledean, to be
tyrannized over from morning to night by Miss Joanna. I know she is your
aunt, my dear; but I can’t help saying that I hate her very name!
“Ever your affectionate friend,
“JANE HOLDSWORTH.
“P. S.--The jeweler sent back the hair he did not want; and I, as in
duty bound, return it enclosed to you, its lawful owner.”
Those scars on Mat’s face, which indicated the stir of strong feelings
within him more palpably than either his expression or his manner,
began to burn redly again while he spelt his way through this letter. He
crumpled it up hastily round the enclosure, instead of folding it as it
had been folded before; and was about to cast it back sharply into the
box, when the sight of the wearing apparel and half-finished work
lying inside seemed to stay his hand, and teach it on a sudden to move
tenderly. He smoothed out the paper with care, and placed it very gently
among the rest of the letters--then looked at the box thoughtfully for
a moment or two; took from his pocket the letter that he had first
examined, and dropped it in among the others--then suddenly and sharply
closed the lid of the box again.
“I can’t touch any more of her things,” he said to himself; “I can’t so
much as look at ‘em, somehow, without its making me--” he stopped to tie
up the box; straining at the cords, as if the mere physical exertion
of pulling hard at something were a relief to him at that moment. “I’ll
open it again and look it over in a day or two, when I’m away from the
old place here,” he resumed, jerking sharply at the last knot--“when I’m
away from the old place, and have got to be my own man again.”
He left the shed; regained the road; and stopped, looking up and down,
and all round him, indecisively. Where should he go next? To the grave,
where he had been told that Mary lay buried? No: not until he had first
read all the letters and carefully examined all the objects in the box.
Back to London, and to his promised meeting next morning with Zack? Yes:
nothing better was left to be done--back to London.
Before nightfall he was journeying again to the great city, and to his
meeting with Zack; journeying (though he little thought it) to the place
where the clue lay hid--the clue to the Mystery of Mary Grice.