"Was it? To whom?" "To a stranger--a slim young gent who came in here one day promiscuous, and wanted an overcoat. He had that blue Witney, he had!" "Now, my dear Mr. Evans," says Mr. Dalrymple, laying his hand lightly on Mr. Evans's shirt-sleeve, and looking up from under his bushy brows into the old man's face, "just try and exercise your memory a little about this stranger. Give us a little more description of him--his age, height, general appearance, and that sort of thing!" But Mr. Evans's memory is quite unaccustomed to exercise, and cannot be jogged, or ensnared, or bullied into any kind of action. The stranger was young, "middling height," appearance, "well, gen-teel and slim-like;" and wild horses could not extract further particulars from Mr. Evans than these. Stay. "What did he give for the coat, and in what money did he pay for it?" There's a chance. Mr. Evans remembers that he "gev fifty-three-and-six for the overcoat, and handed in a ten-pun' note for change." A ten-pound note, which, as Mr. Evans, by a further tremendous effort, recollects, had "the stamp of our post-office on it, as I pinted out to the gent at the time." Was the note there? No; Mr. Evans had paid it into the County Bank to his little account with some other money, but he quite recollected the post-office stamp being on it. Mr. Carruthers thinks this a great point, but is dashed by Mr. Dalrymple's telling him, on their way from the tailor's, that all bank-notes passing through post-offices received the official stamp. This statement is corroborated at the Amherst post-office, where no money-order of that amount, or of anything equivalent to that amount, has been recently paid, the remittances in that form being, as the postmaster explains, generally to the canal boatmen or the railway people, and of small value. So there the clue fails suddenly and entirely, and Mr. Carruthers and Mr. Dalrymple again mount the big swinging barouche and are driven back to Poynings to dinner, which meal is not, however, graced by the presence of either of the ladies; for Mrs. Carruthers is too ill to leave her room, and Clare is in attendance on her. So the gentlemen eat a solemn dinner by themselves, and talk a solemn conversation; and at eight o'clock Mr. Dalrymple goes away, driven by Gibson, coachman, in the carriage, and turning over in his mind how best to make something out of the uneventful day for the information of the Home Secretary.