have been a formidable competitor, but
if they had started for the race at the same time he would have been
quite prepared to back his own chances. Against his rival's position
and wealth, might surely have been set his own youth, regularity of
life, and professional skill; but it was a mere tilting against
windmills to try to win a heart that was already another's. Thus
disturbing influences were gradually composed, and he was able to devote
an undivided attention to his professional work.

As the winter evenings set in, he found congenial occupation in an
attempt to elucidate the heraldry of the great window at the end of the
south transept. He made sketches of the various shields blazoned in it,
and with the aid of a county history, and a manual which Dr Ennefer had
lent him, succeeded in tracing most of the alliances represented by the
various quarterings. These all related to marriages of the Blandamer
family, for Van Linge had filled the window with glass to the order of
the third Lord Blandamer, and the sea-green and silver of the nebuly
coat was many times repeated, beside figuring in chief at the head of
the window. In these studies Westray was glad to have Martin Joliffe's
papers by him. There was in them a mass of information which bore on
the subject of the architect's inquiries, for Martin had taken the
published genealogy of the Blandamer family, and elaborated and
corrected it by all kinds of investigation as to marriages and
collaterals.

The story of Martin's delusion, the idea of the doited grey-beard whom
the boys called "Old Nebuly," had been so firmly impressed on Westray's
mind, that when he first turned over the papers he expected to find in
them little more than the hallucinations of a madman. But by degrees he
became aware that however disconnected many of Martin's notes might
appear, they possessed a good deal of interest, and the coherence which
results from a particular object being kept more or less continuously in
view. Besides endless genealogies and bits of family history extracted
from books, there were recorded all kinds of personal impressions and
experiences, which Martin had met with in his journeyings. But in all
his researches and expeditions he professed to have but one object--the
discovery of his father's name; though what record he hoped to find, or
where or how he hoped to find it, whether in document or register or
inscription, was nowhere set out.

It was eviden