"What were the papers?" demanded Mr. Pawle. "Oh!" replied Mr. Carless, looking at his client. "Letters, certificates, and the like,--all, according to Methley and Woodlesford, excellent proofs of identity." "Did they show them to Your Lordship?" asked Mr. Pawle. "Oh, no! they only told me of them," answered Lord Ellingham. "They said, of course, that they would be shown to me, or to Mr. Carless." "Aye!" muttered Mr. Pawle. "Just so! Yes, and they will have to be shown!" "That follows as a matter of course," observed Mr. Carless. "But now, Pawle, we come to the real point of the case. Methley and Woodlesford, having informed His Lordship of all this when they called on him yesterday afternoon then proceeded to tell him precisely what their client, the claimant, as we will now call him, really wanted, for he had been at some pains, considerable pains, to make himself clear on that point to them, and he desired them to make themselves clear to Lord Ellingham, whom he throughout referred to as his nephew. He had no desire, he told them, to recover his title, nor the estates. He did not care a cent--his own phrase--for the title. He was now sixty years of age. The life he had lived had quite unfitted him for the positions and duties of an English nobleman. He wanted to go back to the country in which he had settled. But as title and estates really were his, he wanted his nephew, the present holder, to make him a proper payment, in consideration of the receipt of which he would engage to preserve the silence which he had already kept so thoroughly and effectively for thirty-five years. Eh?" "In plain language," said Mr. Pawle, "he wanted to be bought." "Precisely!" agreed Mr. Carless. "Of course, Methley and Woodlesford didn't quite put it in that light. They put it that their client had no wish to disturb his nephew, but suggested, kindly, that his nephew should make him a proper payment out of his abundance." Mr. Pawle turned to Lord Ellingham. "Did they mention a sum to Your Lordship?" he asked. "Yes," replied Lord Ellingham, with a smile at Carless. "They did--tentatively." "How much?" asked Mr. Pawle. "One hundred thousand pounds!" "On receipt of which, I suppose," observed Mr. Pawle dryly, "nothing would ever be heard again of your lordship's long-lost uncle, the rightful owner of all that Your Lordship possesses?" Lord Ellingham laughed. "So I gathered!" he answered. "I wish I'd been present when Methley and Woodlesford put forward that proposition," exclaimed the old lawyer. "Did they seem serious?" "Oh, I think they were quite serious," replied Lord Ellingham. "They seemed so; they spoke of it as what they called a domestic arrangement." "Excellent phrase!" remarked Mr. Pawle. "And what said your lordship to their--or the claimant's proposition?"