"Rascal enough!" sighed the little doctor, wearily. "He led me a fine dance of it. I suppose you want to hear what induced me to fly off at a tangent to the other side of England, don't you? A Welsh gentleman, calling himself Mr. Grayly, a tall, red-faced blue-eyed chap in a fur coat, called on me at nine o'clock on Tuesday morning, with the strange tidings that he had come from New Radnor in Wales--fancy that--and got me to believe it, too, the rogue--where the true Colonel Brand was lying sick at the country house of a brother officer in the Guards. I was struck dumb, and didn't know what to think, till a dispatch came per telegraph from the colonel himself, begging me to come and see him, and assuring me that Grayly would tell me all about him. So Grayly hustled me off on the half-past nine train, before I had time to think of anything. At ---- in Berks my friend the Welshman got out, saying that he had an hour's business to transact there, but that I could go on, and he would overtake me in Cirencester; so off I went alone, thinking no evil. But I've never seen him since, the dog." "Miss Margaret received this letter, posted in the same village," interposed Mr. Davenport, exhibiting it grimly. Dr. Gay read it with stupefied wonder. "St. George and the Dragon!" muttered he, "this is a cruel hoax. Who could have written that so like me. Grayly did it, I suppose, though." "Grayly, _alias_ O'Grady, posted it," said Margaret; "but he was employed to do so. Another than he wrote it, a cleverer forger. Well, how did your adventure end?" "Oh, as might have been expected. I posted on, mad with excitement, to New Radnor in search of the sick man, and Grayly's instructions brought me to the door of a ladies' private boarding-school, where I was well stared at, and no doubt laughed at for my stupidity. So, finding that I had been cheated by a rogue who probably wanted to play off a practical joke upon my credulity--(I suppose everybody is laughing at Miss Margaret's suspicions of the colonel here, she must have mentioned them somewhere)--I came back quicker than I went, determined to sift the matter well." "I need prepare your minds no better for the disclosures you must now hear," said Margaret, "for you will not discredit my story, after the mortifying experiences which you have had. I will not reproach you for your past injustice to me, for your desertion of my cause to the side of my enemy, or for your unfounded suspicion of my sanity. I only regret that your past inactivity has forced me to put this desperate case in the hands of a stranger who could not feel the interest in it which you should have felt. But no more of this. I shall explain all to you." She faithfully narrated all that had happened since the night on which she had obtained possession of Roland Mortlake's pocket-book. The two executors heard the recital; Dr. Gay with groans of horror, Mr. Davenport in meek and abject silence.