On reading over these notes I am hardly satisfied with them. They do not seem to give me much basis on which to work. I suspect this person and the other, but I have very little evidence to back me up in such suspicions. The only thing that seems clear to me is that Hilliston has some object in thwarting our plans. What the object is I must find out. Perhaps I shall do so at Thorston, where I am certain to meet both Hilliston and his wife. And that reminds me of what Claude related about her emotion this evening. It is certainly curious, but the worst of dabbling in detective business is that one is apt to get over-suspicious. In this case I think there is no ground for suspicion. Mrs. Hilliston is an American, and came to England twelve years ago. I know this for certain, for I remember when she made her _début_ in society. This being the case, she cannot possibly have any connection with Horriston, and her emotion must have been merely the recollection of the story related by her husband when he told her of Claude. Well, it is past midnight, and I had better end these unsatisfactory notes. Detective business is harder than I thought. How am I to evolve order out of all this chaos I hardly know, save to trust to luck and Jenny Paynton. And so to bed, as saith worthy Samuel Pepys. CHAPTER XXI. THORSTON. IT is astonishing how closely one village resembles another in appearance. The square-towered church, the one winding street, the low-roofed inn, and red-tiled cottages, isolated by narrow alleys; corn lands and comfortable farms around, and still further the mansions, more or less stately, of the county families. Go where you will in the southern countries, all the villages are so constituted; one description serves for all, though on occasions the expanse of the Channel introduces a new feature into the landscape. Thorston was of the same class, but, in its own opinion, had more pretentions to grandeur than its neighbors.