The lad turned to a book which stood with others in a rack over the chimney-piece, and tapped it with his finger. "Yes, sir--because Mr. Bartle gave orders when I first came here that a register of every letter sent out was to be kept--I've always entered them in this book." "And this letter you're talking about--to whom was it addressed?" "Miss Mallathorpe, Normandale Grange, sir." "You went and posted it at once?" "That very minute, sir." "Was it soon afterwards that Mr. Bartle went out?" "He went out as soon as I came back, sir." "And you never saw him again?" Jabey shook his head. "Not alive, sir," he answered. "I saw him when they brought him back." "How long had he been out when you heard he was dead?" "About an hour, sir--just after six it was when they told Mrs. Clough and me. He went out at ten minutes past five." Collingwood got up. He gave the lad's shoulder a friendly squeeze. "All right!" he said. "Now you seem a smart, intelligent lad--don't mention a word to any one of what we've been talking about. You have not mentioned it before, I suppose? Not a word? That's right--don't. Come in again tomorrow morning to see if I want you to be here as usual. I'm going to put a manager into this shop." When the boy had gone Collingwood locked up the shop from the house side, put the key in his pocket, and went into the kitchen. "Mrs. Clough," he said. "I want to see the clothes which my grandfather was wearing when he was brought home last night. Where are they?" "They're in that little room aside of his bed-chamber, Mestur Collingwood," replied the housekeeper. "I laid 'em all there, on the clothes-press, just as they were taken off of him, by Lawyer Eldrick's orders--he said they hadn't been examined, and wasn't to be, till you came. Nobody whatever's touched 'em since." Collingwood went upstairs and into the little room--a sort of box-room opening out of that in which the old man lay. There were the clothes; he went through the pockets of every garment. He found such things as keys, a purse, loose money, a memorandum book, a bookseller's catalogue or two, two or three letters of a business sort--but there was no big folded paper, covered with writing, such as Jabey Naylor had described. The mention of that paper had excited Collingwood's curiosity. He rapidly summed up what he had learned. His grandfather had found a paper, closely written upon, in a book which had been the property of John Mallathorpe, deceased. The discovery had surprised him, for he had given voice to an exclamation of what was evidently astonishment. He had put the paper in his pocket. Then he had written a letter--to Mrs. Mallathorpe of Normandale Grange. When his shop-boy had posted that letter, he himself had gone out--to his solicitor. What, asked Collingwood, was the reasonable presumption? The old man had gone to Eldrick to show him the paper which he had found.