in the future, when
under the soothing influence of a gin-bottle in the present? I thought
of all these circumstances, and I was half inclined to despair of
realising my idea of an early marriage. I took it for granted that such
a secret business would be more likely to have taken place in the
precincts of the Fleet than anywhere else; and having no particular
clue, I set to work, in the first place, to examine all available
documents relating to such marriages."

"It must have been slow work."

"It _was_ slow work," answered Mr. Sheldon with a suppressed groan,
that was evoked by the memory of a bygone martyrdom. "I needn't enter
into all the details of the business,--the people I had to apply to for
permission to see this set of papers, and the signing and
counter-signing I had to go through before I could see that set of
papers, and the extent of circumlocution and idiocy I had to encounter
in a general way before I could complete my investigation. The result
was nil; and after working like a galley-slave I found myself no better
off than before I began my search. Your extracts from Matthew's letters
put me on a new track. I concluded therefrom that there had been a
marriage, and that the said marriage had been a deliberate act on the
part of the young man. I therefore set to work to do what I ought to
have done at starting--I hunted in all the parish registers to be found
within a certain radius of such and such localities. I began with
Clerkenwell, in which neighbourhood our friend spent such happy years,
according to that pragmatical epistle of Mrs. Rebecca's; but after
hunting in all the mouldy old churches within a mile of St.
John's-gate, I was no nearer arriving at any record of Matthew
Haygarth's existence. So I turned my back upon Clerkenwell, and went
southward to the neighbourhood of the Marshalsea, where Mistress
Molly's father was at one time immured, and whence I thought it very
probable Mistress Molly had started on her career as a matron. This
time my guess was a lucky one. After hunting the registers of St.
Olave's, St. Saviour's, and St. George's, and after the expenditure of
more shillings in donations to sextons than I care to remember, I at
last lighted on a document which I consider worth three thousand pounds
to you--and--a very decent sum of money to me."

"I wonder what colour our hair will be when we touch that money?" said
Valentine meditatively. "These sort of cases generally find their