acquainted with the signature, that we did not sign until he
had left the office."

"Do you remember if such a thing ever happened any other time in the
case of my father!"

"Only once, I think, and that was afterwards. We signed then as
witnesses to his signature to a legal document. I don't know what its
nature was. It was done in the same manner directly Mr. Hartington had
driven away."

"It might have been a mortgage deed."

"It might have been, sir, but as I saw only the last page of it, and as
there were but three or four lines of writing at the top of the page,
followed by the signatures, I have no idea even of the nature of the
document."

"May I ask if you have left the office at Abchester on pleasant terms
with Mr. Brander and his partner, for, of course, you know that he still
takes an interest in the firm."

"Oh, yes, it is still carried on as Brander and Jackson, and Brander
still goes down there for an hour or two every day. Yes, I left on
pleasant terms enough, that is to say, I left of my own free will. I had
for some time wished to come up to London, and hearing through a friend
in this office of a vacancy at Barrington and Smiles, I applied and was
fortunate enough to get it."

Cuthbert sat silent for a time. So far the answers he had received
tallied precisely with Cumming's theory. He did not see how he could
carry the inquiry farther here at present. The clerk, who was watching
him closely, was the first to speak.

"I own, Mr. Hartington, that I do not in the slightest degree understand
the gist of your questions, but I can well imagine that at the present
moment you are wondering whether it would be safe to ask farther. I
will, therefore, tell you at once that one of my reasons for leaving Mr.
Brander's employment was that I did not like his way of doing business,
nor did I like the man himself. The general opinion of him was that he
was a public-spirited and kind-hearted man. I can only say that our
opinion of him in the office was a very different one. He was a hard
man, and frequently when pretending to be most lenient to tenants on the
estates to which he was agent, or to men on whose lands he held
mortgages, he strained the law to its utmost limits. I will not say more
than that, but I could quote cases in which he put on the screw in a way
that was to my mind most absolutely unjustifiable, and I had been for a
very long time trying to get out of his office before the opportunity
c