The mind of this inquirer had never before been exercised upon any matter more knotty than the presentation of a simple plot, or the difficulty of getting people off the stage. Sometimes, in moments of depression, he even doubted his own conclusions--a condition of mind fatal to all discovery, because it is quite certain that the eye of faith first perceives what the slow piecing together of facts afterwards proves. You must perceive the truth, somehow, first before you can prove it. Perhaps it is not the truth which is at first discerned. In that case, the seeker after truth has at least an imaginary object by which to direct his steps. It may lead him wrong; on the other hand, it may help him to recover the clue which will lead him straight to the heart of things. In a word, one wants a theory to assist all research in things of science or in things of practice. "Dick," said Molly, "about those registers." "What about them?" "Why, that the doctor might have found the name of the child by simply looking into the registers." "If the child, that is to say, died in Birmingham." "Yes--if it died in Birmingham. Well, then, Dick--if the doctor could search those registers----" She stopped for a moment. They always do it on the stage, to heighten the effect. "Well, Molly?" "Why can't you?" Dick sat down suddenly, knocked over by the shock of this suggestion. "Good Heavens, Molly! Oh the depth and the height and the spring and the leap of woman's wit! Why can't I? why can't I? Molly, I am a log, and a lump, and a lout. I deserve that you should take my half-brother. No--not that! Good-bye, good-bye, incomparable shepherdess!" He raised her hand and kissed it. "I fly--I hasten--on the wings of the wind--to Birmingham--the city of Hidden Truth--to read the Revelations of the Register." CHAPTER XVI. A WRETCH. Hilarie sat alone in the deep recesses of the western porch of the old church. Although it was November, this sheltered porch was still warm; the swallows that make the summer, and their friends the swifts, were gone; the leaves which still clung to the trees were red and brown and yellow; the grass which clothed the graves no longer waved under the breeze with light and shade and sunshine; none of the old bedesmen were walking the churchyard; even the children in the school were silent over their work, as if singing only belonged to summer; and the wind whistled mournfully in the branches of the yew. Her face, always so calm and restful to others, was troubled and disturbed as she sat by herself. She held two letters in her hand. One of them was open. She had already read it twice; now she read it a third time. It was from Molly, and it ran as follows:--