Everard Lisle stayed in Liverpool till Monday, on which day he took an early train up to town. His object in going to London was to endeavour by means of the address which Miss Matilda had given him to trace the present whereabouts--if he were still alive--of the man Kirby Griggs. Futile as the hope seemed that, even if he should succeed in finding him, Griggs would be able to supply him with any information that would further in the slightest degree the special purpose he had in view, he yet felt that he could not rest satisfied till he had interviewed him and heard from his own lips all that he had to tell.

The address supplied him was that of a firm of lawyers in Gray\'s Inn Square, in whose employ Kirby Griggs had been at the date of his interview with Mr. Matthew Thursby.

Fortunately for Everard\'s purpose, Griggs proved not only to be alive, but still in the service of the same firm--a third-rate clerk on a very limited salary. He was a thin, timid, nervous man, with an anxious, hungry sort of look, as though he rarely had as much to eat as he could have done with. When told the reason which had induced Everard to seek him out, he at once expressed his willingness to give him all the information that lay in his power; but as he was too busy to do so during office hours, he requested Everard to call upon him between seven and eight o\'clock the same evening at an address in the suburbs which he gave him.

There Lisle found himself at half-past seven and was at once ushered into the clerk\'s little parlour, in which sacred apartment--hardly ever entered between one Sunday and another--a fire had this evening been lighted in honour of his visit.

There proved to be no reticence on Griggs\' part in discussing in all its bearings that strange episode of twenty years before, in which his sister had played so inexplicable and, ultimately, so tragical a part.

It appeared that she had always been of a romantic and flighty turn of mind, and an insatiable devourer of impossible romances and outrageous love-stories of the very commonest type of penny fiction. She had gone out to the States as maid to a wealthy elderly lady who had died there shortly after her arrival. The next news from Martha had been to the effect that she was on the eve of returning to England by the clipper-ship Pandora, and her brother was requested to meet the vessel on its arrival in dock. Why she had booked herself under the fantastical name of Mrs. Montmorenci-Vane her brother could not imagine, unless it were a name she had picked up in the course of her reading, and had taken a fancy to. Just as little could he understand why, in the presumed state of her finances, she should have chosen to travel as a saloon passenger. As for whence and from whom his sister had obtained the child which she had passed off on board ship as her own, and what possible object she could have had in view in perpetrating such a hoax--if hoax it could be called--was to Kirby Griggs still as much an enigma as it had been at the time; nothing had occurred in the interim to throw even the faintest ray of light on the affair.

Everard\'s heart sank within him. It was evident that the lawyer\'s clerk had nothing of consequence to relate beyond what was known to him already.

After musing awhile, he said: "I presume that nothing was found among your sister\'s luggage--no letters, or papers, or anything else which, if placed in the hands of anyone who was willing to devote both time and patience to following it up, might ultimately furnish a clue to the mystery we have just been discussing."

"There was nothing--nothing whatever found of the kind you mention," replied Griggs with a shake of the head. Then, after a pause, he gave a little deprecatory cough and added: "As I have no wish to hide anything in connection with the affair, it may perhaps be as well to mention that my sister\'s boxes contained a quantity of wearing apparel such as seemed, both to me and my wife, far above her station in life, and the only conclusion we could come to was, that it had most likely been a present to her from the lady who had died. After keeping it for three or four years in case any inquiry should be made about it, my wife gradually used it up in the manufacture of garments for our numerous olive branches."

Although Mrs. Griggs made a third at the interview, as yet she had not spoken more than a dozen words, but in the pause that now ensued she suddenly said: "The ring, Kirby--have you forgotten the ring? That might perhaps supply the gentleman with the clue he is looking for."

Griggs started, and his pale face took on an unwonted blush. "I had indeed forgotten the ring," he said, "but that it will in any way help to clear up the affair, I don\'t for one moment believe." Then turning to Everard, he added: "The ring to which my wife refers is a quite plain hoop of gold, in fact, just like a wedding-ring, except that it is about four times as massive. It was the only article of jewellery found among my sister\'s luggage, although she was said to have been wearing a gold watch and chain and several dress rings at the time she fell overboard. Unfortunately, about four years ago I was very much pressed for money and was compelled to put the ring in pledge, obtaining on it an advance of thirty shillings. I am sorry to say that I have never since been in a position to redeem it, but it has not been lost, because I have been careful to pay the interest as it fell due."

"As you say," replied Everard, "there is not much likelihood of a ring such as you describe this one as being helping me in any way to discover what I am in search of. Still, I should very much like to see and examine it, and if you will allow me to pay the cost of taking it out of pledge I shall be greatly obliged to you."

"Truth to tell, sir," answered Griggs with a shrug, "I haven\'t money enough of my own to spare to enable me to do so. But in any case, nothing can be done in the matter till to-morrow."

So Everard left money for the redemption of the ring and went his way.

At half-past seven the next evening he was again at the house of Kirby Griggs. The ring had been redeemed in the interim. It was what the lawyer\'s clerk had described it as being, a plain massive hoop of gold, but on the inner side Lisle\'s keen eyes detected what seemed to him like a faint tracery of some kind, but apparently so worn that without the help of a magnifying glass it was impossible to make out what it was intended to represent. Griggs, who admitted that he had noticed the marks, but without attaching any value to them, volunteered to obtain the loan of a lens from a working watchmaker who lived close by, and accordingly did so. With the aid of the lens and the exercise of some patience, Everard was enabled to make out that what to the naked eye had looked like so many meaningless scratches was in reality an engraved inscription which ran thus: "J. A. C. to G. R. Pour tout temps."

Scarcely had he succeeded in deciphering the inscription before it flashed across him that the words, "Pour tout temps" formed the somewhat arrogant motto of the Clares of Withington Chase, as also that the letters J. A. C. were the initials of John Alexander Clare.

By the time he got away from the house, taking the ring with him, it was too late to think of going down to the Chase before next morning. So he wandered about some of the quieter streets till a late hour, turning over and over in his mind his discovery in connection with the ring, but nowhere finding an adequate solution of the singular problem which was thus put before him. From whichever point of view he looked at the matter, it still remained as much a tangle as at first. Out of a dozen questions which he asked himself, there was not one he could answer. He turned into his hotel a little before midnight and went to bed, but sleep came to him only by fits and starts, and all through the dark hours the same series of questions kept ringing their changes in his brain.

After an early breakfast he caught the eight-thirty train for Mapleford. A fly took him and his luggage from the station to Elm Lodge, from whence, a few minutes later, he walked across the park to the Chase.

Sir Gilbert had lingered over breakfast, talking to his son, and in the corridor Everard met him face to face, looking a dozen years younger than when he had seen him last. The change in him was indeed marvellous.

"What! back already?" he said beamingly. "I thought you were going to take a few days\' holiday in London. Why didn\'t you, eh? Why didn\'t you? But we\'ll have no work to-day, that\'s certain. The best thing you can do will be to have the dog-cart out after luncheon and take your sweetheart for a drive--lucky dog that you are, to have won the love of such a girl!" Then his voice took on a deeper tone. "What a happy chance for me was that which brought you and my son together at Liverpool and so gave Alec back to me weeks before I should otherwise have had him! I cannot help feeling as if I somehow owe it all to you. Well, well"--laying a kindly hand on his shoulder--"when your wedding-day is here you will find that I have not forgotten you." And with a smile and a nod he passed on.

Everard\'s most pressing object was to secure a private interview with Mr. John Clare--as he was henceforward to be known to the world, although to his father he would never be anything but Alec. Not till he should have recounted to the latter the history of the ring and put it into his hands, would he go in search of Ethel and surprise her by his unexpected return.

Presently he found John alone in the library, hunting up some of the favourite authors of ............