‘Do you think the change of style could possibly have anything to do with it?’ he asked, after a meditative silence. ‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘Which change of style do you mean?’ ‘I mean the change of the beginning of the year from March to January,’ he answered. ‘When did that take place?’ I asked. ‘Some time about the middle of the last century,’ he replied; ‘but I will find out exactly.’ The next night he brought me the information that the January which, according to the old style, would have been that of 1752 was promoted to be the first month of the year 1753. My dates then were, by several years, antecedent to the change, and it was an indisputable anachronism that the January between the December of 1747 and the March of 1748, should be entered as belonging to the latter year. This seemed to throw a little dubious light upon the perplexity; the January thus entered belonging clearly to 1747, and, therefore, was the same January with that of my ancestor’s letters. Plainly, however, the entry could not stand in evidence, its interpolation at least appeared indubitable, for how otherwise could it stand at the beginning of the new year instead of towards the end of the old, five, years before the change of style? Also, now I clearly remember that it did look a little crushed between the heading of the year and the next entry. It must be a forgery--and a stupid one as well, seeing the bottom of the preceding page, where there was a small blank, would have been the proper place to choose for it--that is, under the heading 1747. Could the 1748 have been inserted afterwards? That did not appear likely, seeing it belonged to all the rest of the entries on the page, there being none between the date in question and March 29, on the 25th of which month the new year began. The conclusion lying at the door was that some one had inserted the marriage so long after the change of style that he knew nothing of the trap there lying for his forgery. It seemed probable that, blindly following the letters, he had sought to place it in the beginning of the previous year, but, getting bewildered in the apparent eccentricities of the arrangement of month and year, had at last drawn his bow at a venture. Neither this nor any other theory I could fashion did I, however, find in the least satisfactory. All I could be sure of was that here was no evidence of the marriage--on the contrary, a strong presumption against it. For my part, the dream in which I had indulged had been so short that I very soon recovered from the disappointment of the waking therefrom. Neither did the blot with which the birth of my grandfather was menaced affect me much. My chief annoyance in regard of that aspect of the affair was in being _so_ related to Geoffrey Brotherton.