"My driver had taken a road which we had not explored before. We had not gone more than three miles when we came to a pair of lodge gates of wrought iron, which drew my attention by their ruinous and neglected condition. The driver stopped at my request and I alighted in order to examine them more closely. The gates themselves, which were of an intricate and finely-wrought pattern, and must at one time have been very beautiful, were now thickly rusted and filthy with the grime of years, and having fallen forward a little, hung loosely together as though they were trying to support each other in their hour of misfortune. The padlock and chain which fastened them seemed to indicate that they were rarely, if ever, opened. Close by, however, there was an arched entrance in the wall, evidently intended for pedestrians, with a rude, unpainted door which formed a fitting complement to the rusted gates. No figure of any kind crowned the square freestone pillars on which the gates were hung, yet they seemed to me to have a bare and unfinished aspect, as though they lacked some crowning adornment. "Pushing open the rude door, which yielded to my hand, I entered the park. Inside were the remains of what had at one time been a two-storied lodge, which was now little more than the skeleton of a house, with huge gaps in its roof and a great part of its flooring gone, and scarcely a whole pane in its window-frames. Unsightly weeds and great prickly brambles grew all about, and, in short, the whole scene was one of melancholy neglect and decay. Stepping backward a pace or two, while wondering whether it would be worth my while to sketch the ruined lodge and its surroundings, I caught my foot against some hard substance in the rank grass, and with difficulty saved myself from falling. On looking down to ascertain the nature of the obstruction, my eyes caught sight of something which, as the saying goes, brought my heart into my mouth. There, half-buried among the docks and weeds, lay the identical object I had been at such pains to find--your mutilated griffin to wit, with its broken shield. How it had come there mattered nothing, but only that it was there. I drew a long breath, feeling little doubt that I had now in my hands the second link of the chain of which the first had been the tracing of Mr. Hodgson. Where shall I find the third?