He divided the advertisements, generally, into five classes, _Cosmetic_, _Private Enquiry_, _Situations_ (which revealed some others of the oddest), _Nondescript_ (including anything from “Remember the Cats,” to a request to some titled lady to act as godmother to a gentleman’s child, or a suggestion that a third lady should join two others in arranging, and paying for, a series of painful experiments on human subjects), and, last and most numerous of all, _Requests for Loans_. Many of these found Gilead doubtful. While the appeals, from clergymen and others, on behalf of poor parishes, ruined homes, unemployed labour and so forth, affected him so sensibly that he would have liked to be able to answer every one of them with help proportionate to the needs it voiced, there were certain piteous entreaties for cash which left him cold. They smacked too much of the cunning and versatility of the professional mendicant; somehow they seemed a little shy of the inquisition of those clear contemplative eyes of his under their level brows. At the best they were couched in that key which argued, if not a constitutional absence, at least a temporary surrender of pride and self-respect. But he was no Pharisee, and very remote from judging wrung poverty by the standards of comfort and a competence. The question was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and to the pursuit of that he would have rejoiced to devote whatever fortune the Fates might allot him. And, perhaps because his aspirations were so singular in a very ordinary world, taken with the fact that his temperament was even a curiously calm and virginal one, the Fates, who are a rather spinstery and spiteful triplet on the whole, were moved to do the unexpected thing by him--and in a very handsome and appropriate manner--by causing Messrs Plover, Stone and Company, the respectable solicitors, to insert an advertisement in the Agony Column of that very _Daily Post_, inviting the next-of-kin of the late Mr Lemuel Lamb to call upon them and hear of something considerably to his advantage. Gilead read the advertisement in due course, and considered it with characteristic sobriety and an even pulse. “If,” he thought, “there is anything out of the common in this, I shall not forget my pledge to the Quest.”