was well nigh as old as me.
But seems he'd saved a little money, and that goes a long way with
any girl."

"Was he the man who drove Mr. Soames that day the cheque was lost?"
Mr. Toogood asked this question perhaps a little too abruptly. At any
rate he obtained no answer to it. The waiter said he knew nothing
about Mr. Soames, or the cheque, and the lawyer, suspecting that the
waiter was suspecting him, finished his brandy-and-water and went to
bed.

[Illustration: Mr. Toogood and the old Waiter.]

Early on the following morning he observed that he was specially
regarded by a shabby-looking man, dressed in black, but in a black
suit that was very old, with a red nose, whom he had seen in the
hotel on the preceding day; and he learned that this man was a
cousin of the landlord,--one Dan Stringer,--who acted as a clerk in
the hotel bar. He took an opportunity also of saying a word to Mr
Stringer the landlord,--whom he found to be a somewhat forlorn and
gouty individual, seated on cushions in a little parlour behind the
door. After breakfast he went out, and having twice walked round the
Cathedral close and inspected the front of the palace and looked up
at the windows of the prebendaries' houses, he knocked at the door of
the deanery. The dean and Mrs. Arabin were on the Continent, he was
told. Then he asked for Mr. Harding, having learned that Mr. Harding
was Mrs. Arabin's father, and that he lived in the deanery. Mr. Harding
was at home, but was not very well, the servant said. Mr. Toogood,
however, persevered, sending up his card, and saying that he
wished to have a few minutes' conversation with Mr. Harding on very
particular business. He wrote a word upon his card before giving it
to the servant,--"about Mr. Crawley". In a few minutes he was shown
into the library, and had hardly time, while looking at the shelves,
to remember what Mr. Crawley had said of his anger at the beautiful
bindings, before an old man, very thin and very pale, shuffled into
the room. He stooped a good deal, and his black clothes were very
loose about his shrunken limbs. He was not decrepit, nor did he seem
to be one who had advanced to extreme old age; but yet he shuffled
rather than walked, hardly raising his feet from the ground. Mr
Toogood, as he came forward to meet him, thought that he had never
seen a sweeter face. There was very much of melancholy in it, of that
soft sadness of age which seems to acknowledge, and in some sort to
r