Ullerton. I want to
find an heir-at-law in a direct line from Matthew; and you know my
theory on that point. But if we fail in that direction, we must of
course fall back upon the Judsons, who are a disgustingly complicated
set of people, and will take half a lifetime to disentangle, to say
nothing of other men who may be working the same business, and who are
pretty sure to have pinned their faith on the female branch of the
Haygarthian tree.

"I want you to ferret out some of the Judson descendants with a view to
picking up further documentary evidence in the shape of old letters,
inscriptions in old books, and so on. That Matthew had a secret is
certain; and that he was very much inclined to reveal that secret in
his later days is also certain. Who shall say that he did not tell it
to his only sister, though he was afraid to tell it to his wife?

"You have acted with so much discretion up to this point, that I do not
care to trouble you with any further hints or suggestions. When money
is wanted, it shall be forthcoming; but I must beg you to manage things
economically, as I have to borrow at a considerable sacrifice; and
should this affair prove a failure, my ruin is inevitable.

"Yours, &c. G.S."

My friend Sheldon is a man who can never have been more than "yours
et-cetera" to any human creature. I suppose what he calls ruin would be
a quiet passage through the Bankruptcy Court, and a new set of
chambers. I should not suppose that sort of ruin would be very terrible
for a man whose sole possessions are a few weak-backed horsehair
chairs, a couple of battered old desks, half a dozen empty japanned
boxes, a file of _Bell's Life_, and a Turkey carpet in which the
progress of corruption is evident to the casual observer.

The hunting-up of the Judsons is a very easy matter as compared to the
task of groping in the dimness of the past in search of some faint
traces of the footsteps of departed Haygarths. Whereas the Haygarth
family seem to be an extinct race, the Judsonian branch have bred and
mustered in the land; and my chief difficulty in starting has been an
_embarras de richesse_, in the shape of half a page of Judsons in the
Ullerton directory.

Whether to seek out Theodore Judson, the attorney, in Nile street East,
or the Rev. James Judson, curate of St. Gamaliel; whether to appeal in
the first instance to Judson & Co., haberdashers and silk mercers, of
the Ferrygate, or to Judson of Judson and Grinder