"Nasty, effeminate, un-English foppery," grumbled Mark; "so he may be
in the scribbling line after all."

"I'll go and see if I can find him," quoth the Doctor.

"Bother you," said Mark, "always running out o' nights after somebody
else's business, instead of having a jolly evening. You stay, Tom,
like a sensible fellow, and tell me and Mary some more travellers'
lies. Had much sporting, boy?"

"Hum! I've shot and hunted every beast, I think, shootable and
huntable, from a humming-bird to an elephant; and I had some splendid
fishing in Canada; but, after all, give me a Whitbury trout, on a
single-handed Chevalier. We'll at them to-morrow, Mr. Armsworth."

"We will, my boy! never so many fish in the river as this year, or in
season so early."

The good Doctor returned; but with no news which could throw light
on the history of the now mysterious Mr. John Briggs. He had locked
himself into the room with his father's corpse, evidently in great
excitement and grief; spent several hours in walking up and down there
alone; and had then gone to an attorney in the town, and settled
everything about the funeral "in the handsomest way," said the man of
law; "and was quite the gentleman in his manner, but not much of a man
of business; never had even thought of looking for his father's will;
and was quite surprised when I told him that there ought to be a fair
sum--eight hundred or a thousand, perhaps, to come in to him, if the
stock and business were properly disposed of. So he went off to London