‘Mr Wilfrid Cumbermede Daryll, of the Parish of [----] second son of Sir Richard Daryll of Moldwarp Hall in the County of [----] and Mistress Elizabeth Woodruffe were married by a license Jan. 15.’ ‘I don’t know the name of Daryll,’ I said. ‘It was your own great-grandfather’s name,’ he returned. ‘I happen to know that much.’ ‘You knew this was here, Mr Coningham,’ I said. ‘That is why you brought me here.’ ‘You are right. I did know it. Was I wrong in thinking it would interest you?’ ‘Certainly not. I am obliged to you. But why this mystery? Why not have told me what you wanted me to go for?’ ‘I will why you in turn. Why should I have wanted to show you now more than any other time what I have known for as many years almost as you have lived? You spoke of a ride--why shouldn’t I give a direction to it that might pay you for your trouble? And why shouldn’t I have a little amusement out of it if I pleased? Why shouldn’t I enjoy your surprise at finding in a place you had hardly heard of, and would certainly count most uninteresting, the record of a fact that concerned your own existence so nearly? There!’ ‘I confess it interests me more than you will easily think--inasmuch as it seems to offer to account for things that have greatly puzzled me for some time. I have of late met with several hints of a connection at one time or other between the Moat and the Hall, but these hints were so isolated that I could weave no theory to connect them. Now I dare say they will clear themselves up.’ ‘Not a doubt of-that, if you set about it in earnest.’ ‘How did he come to drop his surname?’ ‘That has to be accounted for.’ ‘It follows--does it not?--that I am of the same blood as the present possessors of Moldwarp Hall?’ ‘You are--but the relation is not a close one,’ said Mr Coningham. ‘Sir Giles was but distantly related to the stock of which you come.’ ‘Then--but I must turn it over in my mind. I am rather in a maze.’ ‘You have got some papers at the Moat?’ he said--interrogatively. ‘Yes; my friend Osborne has been looking over them. He found out this much--that there was once some connection between the Moat and the Hall, but at a far earlier date than this points to, or any of the hints to which I just now referred. The other day, when I dined at Sir Giles’s, Mr Alderforge said that Cumbermede was a name belonging to Sir Giles’s ancestry--or something to that effect; but that again could have had nothing to do with those papers, or with the Moat at all.’ Here I stopped, for I could not bring myself to refer to the sword. It was not merely that the subject was too painful: of all things I did not want to be cross-questioned by my lawyer-companion. ‘It is not amongst those you will find anything of importance, I suspect. Did your great-grandmother--the same, no doubt, whose marriage is here registered--leave no letters or papers behind her?’ ‘I’ve come upon a few letters. I don’t know if there is anything more.’