'Nothing discovered!' Athelstan repeated. 'Why, I took it for granted that the truth had come out long since. I was making up my mind to call upon old Dering. I don't think I shall go now.--And my sister Hilda will not be coming here to express her contrition. I am disappointed.' 'You can see Elsie if you like.' 'Yes--I can see her,' he repeated.--'George'--he returned to the old subject--'do you know the exact particulars of that robbery?' 'There was a forged cheque, and the Bank paid it across the counter.' 'The cheque,' Athelstan explained, 'was made payable to the order of a certain unknown person named Edmund Gray. It was endorsed by that name. To prove that forgery, they should have got the cheque and examined the endorsement. That was the first thing, certainly. I wonder how they began.' 'I do not know. It was while I was in my articles, and all we heard was a vague report. You ought not to have gone away. You should have stayed to fight it out.' 'I was right to give up my berth after what the chief said. How could I remain drawing his pay and doing his work, when he had calmly given me to understand that the forgery lay between two hands, and that he strongly suspected mine?' 'Did Mr. Dering really say so? Did he go so far as that?' 'So I walked out of the place. I should have stayed at home and waited for the clearing up of the thing, but for my own people--who--well--you know---- So I went away in a rage.' 'And have you come back--as you went--in a rage?' 'Well--you see, that is the kind of fire that keeps alight of its own accord.' 'I believe that some sort of a search was made for this Edmund Gray; but I do not know how long it lasted or who was employed.' 'Detectives are no good. Perhaps the chief didn't care to press the business. Perhaps he learned enough to be satisfied that Checkley was the man. Perhaps he was unwilling to lose an old servant. Perhaps the villain confessed the thing. It all comes back to me fresh and clear, though for eight long years I have not talked with a soul about it.' 'Tell me,' said George, a little out of sympathy with this dead and buried forgery--'tell me where you have been--what you have done--and what you are doing now.' 'Presently--presently,' he replied with impatience. 'I am sure now that I was wrong. I should not have left the country. I should have taken a lodging openly, and waited and looked on. Yes; that would have been better. Then I should have seen that old villain, Checkley, in the dock. Perhaps it is not yet too late. Still--eight years. Who can expect a commissionaire to remember a single message after eight years?' 'Well--and now tell me,' George asked again, 'what you have been doing.' 'The black-sheep always turns up, doesn't he? You learn at home that he has got a berth in the Rocky Mountains; but he jacks it up and goes to Melbourne, where he falls on his feet; but gets tired, and moves on to New Zealand, and so home again. It's a regular round.'