"I think, sir, as I have other calls to make," said the old clergyman, much offended, and rising to take his leave as he spoke. "I had better wish you a good afternoon." "Pray, sir, stay a moment; I never knew a clergyman in such a hurry before to leave a sick man; as no man knows, according to your theory, when he's going to be converted--and how should I? The mildew of death is whitening each of us at this moment; the last golden sands are running out. D-- it, give me a chance." This incongruous harangue was uttered so testily--even fiercely--that the good clergyman was puzzled, and began to doubt in what state his fever might have left Mr. Dingwell's brain. "Don't you see, sir? Do sit down--a little patience won't do either of us any harm." "Certainly, sir," hesitated the clergyman, looking hard at him, "but I have not a great deal of time." "Nor I a great deal of strength; I shan't keep you long, sir." The Rev. Thomas Bartlett sat down again, and glanced meekly an invitation to Mr. Dingwell to begin. "Nine-and-twenty years, sir, since you married that unlucky pair. Now, I need not say by what particular accidents, for the recollection is painful, I was in after-life thrown into the society of that unfortunate ill-used dog, poor Arthur Verney; I knew him intimately. I was the only friend he had left, and I was with him when he died, infamously neglected by all his family. He had just got his half-yearly payment of a beggarly annuity, on which he subsisted; _he_--the rightful Viscount Verney, and the head of his family--ha, ha, ha! By Jove, sir, I can't help laughing, though I pity him. Having that little sum in his hand, said he to me, 'You take charge of this for my son, if you can find him; and I rely on your friendship to look him up if ever you revisit England; this is for him; and he was baptized by the Rev. Thomas Bartlett, as my wife wrote to tell me just eight-and-twenty years ago, and he, no doubt, can enable you to trace him.' That's what _he_ said--what say _you_, sir?" "Old Lady Verney placed the child in charge of the gentleman who then managed the Verney property. I heard all about it from a Mr. Wynne Williams, a Welsh lawyer. The child died when only a year old; you know _he_ would have been the heir apparent." "Poor Arthur said _no_, sir. I asked him--a Scotch marriage, or some of those crooked wed-locks on which they found bigamies and illegitimacies. 'No,' Arthur said, 'he has no technical case, and he may be miserably poor; this is all I can do, and I charge you with it.' It was very solemn, sir. Where does that lawyer live?" "At this moment I can't recollect, sir--some place near which the Verneys have estates." "Cardyllian?" "The very place, sir." "I know it, sir; I've been there when I was a boy. And his name was _Wynne_ Williams?" "I _think_ it was," said the clergyman. "And you have nothing more to say about the poor child?" asked Mr. Dingwell.