, and taking up another, said:

"Will you now tell me all that you know concerning, your grandfather?"

"He was called Eustace Vere Carleton, I believe, from the fact of his
signing himself so in his letters to my father, wherein he desired that
he should enter the British service, and said that he should provide his
commission and make him a small yearly allowance as long as he remained
in the service,--these two letters are now in my possession and at your
service, should you require them," so saying, Carlton took from his desk
the papers in question, which he handed to the Lawyer. "But, pray, sir,
in what way and to what extent am I to be benefitted by the early
proceedings of my paternal relatives?" enquired the Dragoon, darting at
the same time a knowing wink at the surgeon, who at that moment happened
to look up, for until then he had appeared to be deeply absorbed with a
late number of _Punch_, though in truth he was very much interested in,
and had not lost a word of the conversation that had been going on
between the lawyer and his friend Carlton, but he only shook his head in
acknowledgment of the friendly wink, and continued to turn over the
pages of that comical but highly interesting periodical which he had
taken up at the commencement of the interview.

"Every lost link in the chain of evidence is, I believe, now complete,"
replied Mr. Capias, "and I am at liberty to communicate to you the
following circumstance which, doubtless, up to the present time you have
been a stranger to." He hereupon cleared his throat, and in a well
modulated voice said:

"Maud Chumly, your great grandmother, the daughter of a Church of
England Clergyman, at the age of eighteen married Arthur Eustace
Carlton, ninth Earl of Castlemere. The result of their union was a son,
a wild, harum scarum sort of a youth who, at the age of nineteen, was
provided with an appointment and sent out to the British Embassy at the
Court of Spain. While here he managed to get entangled and elope with
the wife of a Castillian Hidalgo; they were pursued and overtaken by the
enraged Grandee and his followers; the lady was recovered, but the
husband lost his life in a duel with the gay Lothario who, subsequently,
to avoid the vengeance of the family and the strong arm of the law, fled
to Mexico, where, a few years after, he married the daughter of a French
officer of high rank, by whom he also had an only son, but never
returned to England, nor did he