As the day wore on, however, it became gradually clear to him that Montague Nevitt didn't mean to return at all. Hour after hour passed by, but nothing was heard of him. The landlord, good man, began to express his doubts and fears most freely. He hoped no harm hadn't come to the gentleman in the parlour; he had a powerful zight o' money on un for a man to carry about; the landlord had zeen it when he took out his book from his pocket to pay the porter. Volks didn't ought to go about with two or dree hundred pound or more in the lonely lanes on the edge of the moorland. But Guy, for his part, put a different interpretation on the affair at once. In some way or other Montague Nevitt, he thought, must have found out he was being tracked, and, fearing for his safety, must have dropped the pocket-book and made off, without note or notice given, on his own sound legs, for some other part of the country. So Guy made up his mind to return next morning by the very first train direct to Plymouth, and there inquire once more whether anything further had been seen of the noticeable stranger. CHAPTER XXIV. A SLIGHT MISUNDERSTANDING. On the very same day that Guy Waring visited Mambury, where his mother was married, Montague Nevitt had hunted up the entry of Colonel Kelmscott's wedding in the church register. Nevitt's behaviour, to say the truth, wasn't quite so black as Guy Waring painted it. He had gone off with the extra three thousand in his pocket, to be sure; but he didn't intend to appropriate it outright to his own uses. He merely meant to give Guy a thoroughly good fright, as it wasn't really necessary the call should be met for another fortnight; and then, as soon as he'd found out the truth about Colonel Kelmscott and his unacknowledged sons, he proposed to use his knowledge of the forgery as a lever with Guy, so as to force him to come to advantageous terms with his supposed father. Nevitt's idea was that Guy and Cyril should drive a hard bargain on their own account with the Colonel, and that he himself should then receive a handsome commission on the transaction from both the brothers, under penalty of disclosing the true facts about the cheque by whose aid Guy had met their joint liability to the Rio Negro Diamond Mines. It was with no small joy, therefore, that Nevitt saw at last in the parish register of St. Mary's at Mambury, the interesting announcement, "June 27th, Henry Lucius Kelmscott, of the parish of Plymouth, bachelor, private in the Regiment of Scots Greys, to Lucy Waring, spinster, of this parish."