"Yes; and have belonged to it these seventy-five years, man and boy;" whereby, no doubt, the dreary confusion of the unhappy being's mind. Figurez donc, mon cher. Qui-que-ce-soit, fifty-five years or so of commercial breakfasts and dinners in such a place as Ullerton! Five-and-fifty years of steaks and chops; five-and-fifty years of ham and eggs, indifferently buttered toasts, and perennial sixes of brandy-and-water! After rambling to and fro with spoons and forks, and while in progress of clearing my table, and dropping the different items of my breakfast equipage, the poor soddened faded face of this dreary wanderer became suddenly illumined with a faint glimmer that was almost the light of reason.

"There were a Brice in Ullerton when I were a lad; I've heard father tell on him," he murmured slowly.

"An attorney?"

"Yes. He were a rare wild one, he were! It was when the Prince of Wales were Regent for his poor old mad father, as the saying is, and folks was wilder like in general in those times, and wore spencers—lawyer Brice wore a plum-coloured one."

Imagine then again, mon cher, an attorney in a plum-coloured spencer! Who, in these enlightened days, would trust his business to such a practitioner? I perked up considerably, believing that my aged imbecile was going to be of real service to me.

"Yes, he were a rare wild one, he were," said my ancient friend with excitement. "I can remember him as well as if it was yesterday, at Tiverford races—there was races at Tiverford in those days, and gentlemen jocks. Lawyer Brice rode his roan mare—Queen Charlotte they called her. But after that he went wrong, folks said—speckilated with some money, you see, that he didn't ought to have touched—and went to America, and died."

"Died in America, did he? Why the deuce couldn't he die in Ullerton? I should fancy it was a pleasanter place to die in than it is to live in. And how about his sons?"

"Lawyer Brice's sons?"

"Yes, of course."

My imbecile's lips expanded into a broad grin.

"Lawyer Brice never had no sons," he exclaimed, with a tone which seemed to express a contemptuous pity for my ignorance; "he never married."

"Well, well; his brothers. He had brothers, I suppose?"

"Not as I ever heard tell on," answered my imbecile, relapsing into hopeless inanity.

It was clear that no further help was to be obtained from him. I went to the landlord—a brisk business-like individual of Transatlantic goaheadism. From him I learned that there were no Brices in Ullerton, and never had been within the thirty years of his experience in that town. He gave me an Ullerton directory in confirmation of that fact—a neat little shilling volume, which I begged leave to keep for a quarter of an hour before returning it.