in Gilmore?" said that gentleman as Will
entered his private room. "I am glad to see you. I have been quietly at
work making enquiries since you were last here. I sent a man down to
Scarcombe some months ago. He learned as much as he could there, and since
then has been going from village to village and has traced your father's
journeyings for some months. Now that you are home I should suggest
employing two or three men to continue the search and to find out if
possible the point from which your father started his wanderings.
Assuming, as I do, that he was the son of Sir Ralph Gilmore, I imagine
that he must have quarrelled with his father at or about the time of his
marriage. In that case he would probably come up to London. I have
observed that most men who quarrel with their parents take that step
first. There, perhaps, he endeavoured to obtain employment. The struggle
would probably last two, or three, or four years. I take the last to be
the most likely period, for by that time you would be about three years
old. I say that because he could hardly have taken you with him had you
been younger.

"It is evident that he had either no hope of being reconciled to his
father or that he was himself too angry to make advances. I therefore
propose to send men north from London to enquire upon all the principal
roads. A man with a violin and a little child cannot have been altogether
forgotten in the villages in which he stopped, and I hope to be able to
trace his way up to Yorkshire. Again, I should employ one of the Bow
Street runners to make enquiries in London for a man with his wife and
child who lived here so many years ago, and whose name was Gilmore. I am
supposing, you see, that that was his real name, and not one that he had
assumed. I confess I have my doubts about it. A man who quits his home for
ever after a desperate quarrel is as likely as not to change his name.
That of course we must risk. While these enquiries are being made I should
like you to go back to your old home; it is possible that other mementoes
of his stay there may have escaped the memory of the old people with whom
you lived. Anything of that kind would be of inestimable value."

"I will go down," Will said. "I am afraid there is little chance of my
finding them both alive now. I fancy they were about fifty-five when I
went to live with them, which would make them near eighty now. One or
other of them, however, may be alive. I have not been to