"You are not great in expedients," said Sheldon, tilting back his chair, and taking a shabby folio from a shelf of other shabby folios. "This is a British gazetteer," he said, turning to the index of the work before him. "We'll test the ancient Sparsfield's memory with every Cross in the three Ridings, and if the faintest echo of the name we want still lingers in his feeble old brain, we'll awaken it." My patron ran his finger-nail along one of the columns of the index.

"Just take your pencil and write down the names as I call them," he said. "Here we are—Aylsey Cross; and here we are again—Bowford Cross, Callindale Cross, Huxter's Cross, Jarnam Cross, Kingborough Cross." Then, after a careful examination of the column, he exclaimed, "Those are all the Crosses in the county of York, and it will go hard with us if you or I can't find the descendants of Christian Meynell's daughter at one of them. The daughter herself may be alive, for anything we know."

"And how about the Samuel Meynell who died at Calais? You'll have to find some record of his death, won't you? I suppose in these cases one must prove everything."

"Yes, I must prove the demise of Samuel," replied the sanguine genealogist; "that part of the business I'll see to myself, while you hunt out the female branch of the Meynells. I want an outing after a long spell of hard work; so I'll run across to Calais and search for the register of Samuel's interment. I suppose somebody took the trouble to bury him, though he was a stranger in the land."

"And if I extort the name we want from poor old Sparsfield's recollection?"

"In that case you can start at once for the place, and begin your search on the spot. It can't be above fifty years since this woman married, and there must be some inhabitant of the place old enough to remember her. O, by the bye, I suppose you'll be wanting more cash for expenses," added Mr. Sheldon, with a sigh. He took a five-pound note from his pocket-book, and gave it to me with a piteous air of self-sacrifice. I know that he is poor, and that whatever money he does contrive to earn is extorted from the necessities of his needier brethren. Some of this money he speculates upon the chances of the Haygarthian succession, as he has speculated his money on worse chances in the past. "Three thousand pounds!" he said to me, as he handed me the poor little five-pound note; "think what a prize you are working for, and work your hardest. The nearer we get to the end, the slower our progress seems to me; and yet it has been very rapid progress, considering all things."