Luke Tulliver
would come into all his master's money; and opinion inclined that way
even yet, seeing that Mr. Tulliver still held his ground in the shop, and
that no strangers had been seen to enter the place since the funeral.

From Queen Anne's Court Gilbert Fenton went on to the gloomy street where
Mr. Medler had his office and abode. It was not an hour for a
professional visit; but Gilbert found the lawyer still hard at work at
his desk, under the lurid light of a dirty-looking battered old oil-lamp,
which left the corners of the dingy wainscoted room in profound
obscurity. He looked up from his papers with some show of surprise on
hearing Mr. Fenton's name announced by the slipshod maid-of-all-work who
had admitted the late visitor, Mr. Medler's solitary clerk having
departed to his own dwelling some hours before.

"I must ask you to excuse this untimely call, Mr. Medler," Gilbert said
politely; "but the fact of the matter is, I am a little anxious about my
friend Mrs. Holbrook and her affairs, and I thought you the most likely
person to give me some information about them. I should have called in
business hours; but I have only just returned from the country, and did
not care to delay my inquiries until to-morrow. I have just come from
Queen Anne's Court, and am rather surprised to find that neither Mrs.
Holbrook nor her husband has been there. You have seen or heard from them
since the funeral, I suppose?"

"No, Mr. Fenton, I have neither seen nor heard of them. I wrote a formal
letter to Mrs. Holbrook, setting out the contents of the will; but there
has been no answer as yet."

"Strange, is it not?" Gilbert exclaimed, with an anxious look.

"Well, yes, it is certainly not the usual course of proceeding. However,
there is time enough yet. The funeral has not been over much more than a
week. The property is perfectly safe, you know."

"Of course; but it is not the less extraordinary that Mr. Holbrook should
hang back in this manner. I will go down to Hampshire the first thing
to-morrow and see Mrs. Holbrook."

"Humph!" muttered the lawyer; "I can't say that I see any necessity for
that. But of course you know best."

Gilbert Fenton did start for Hampshire early the next morning by the same
train in which Marian had travelled after her grandfather's death. It was
still quite early in the day when he found himself at Malsham, that quiet
comfortable little market-town where he had first discovered a clue to