“Delighted to howl for you,” said Brown, and presently the wires were carrying a message to Barton in town. Maitland wanted to see him at once, on very pressing business. In a couple of hours there came a reply: Barton would be with Maitland by dinner-time. The ghostly room, in the Early William Morris manner, looked cosey and even homelike when the lamp was lit, when the dusky blue curtains were drawn, and a monster of the deep--one of the famous Oxford soles, larger than you ever see them elsewhere--smoked between Maitland and Barton. Beside the latter stood a silver quart pot, full of “strong,” a reminiscence of “the old coaching days,” when Maitland had read with Barton for Greats. The invalid’s toast and water wore an air of modest conviviality, and might have been mistaken for sherry by anyone who relied merely on such information as is furnished by the sense of sight The wing of a partridge (the remainder of the brace fell to Barton’s lot) was disposed of by the patient; and then, over the wine, which he did not touch, and the walnuts, which he tried nervously to crack in his thin, white hands, Maitland made confession and sought advice. It was certainly much easier talking to Barton than to Bielby, for Barton knew so much already, especially about the _Hit or Miss_; but when it came to the story of the guardianship of Margaret, and the kind of prospective engagement to that young lady, Barton rose and began to walk about the room. But the old beams creaked under him in the weak places; and Barton, seeing how much he discomposed Maitland, sat down again, and steadied his nerves with a glass of the famous St. Gatien’s port. Then, when Maitland, in the orderly course of his narrative, came to the finding of poor Dick Shields’ body in the snow-cart, Barton cried, “Why, you don’t mean to say that was the man, the girl’s father? By George, I can tell you something about _him_! At the inquest my partner, old Munby, made out--” “Has there been an inquest already? Oh, of course there must have been,” said Maitland, whose mind had run so much on Margaret’s disappearance that he had given little of his thoughts (weak and inconsecutive enough of late) to the death of her father. “Of course there has been an inquest Have you not read the papers since you were ill?” Now, Maitland had the common-room back numbers of the _Times_ since the day of his return from Devonshire in his study at that very moment But his reading, so far, had been limited to the “Agony Column” of the advertisements (where he half hoped to find some message), and to all the paragraphs headed “Strange Occurrence” and “Mysterious Disappearance.” None of these had cast any light on the fortunes of Margaret. “I have not seen anything about the inquest,” he said. “What verdict did they bring in? The usual one, I suppose--‘Visitation,’ and all that kind of thing, or ‘Death from exposure while under the influence of alcoholic stimulants.’”