been able to
extort from Mr. Grewter. I took a second cup of the sweet warm liquid
which my new friends called tea, in order to have an excuse for
loitering, while I tried to obtain more light from the reminiscences of
the old frame-maker.

No more light came, however. So I was fain to take my leave, reserving
to myself the privilege of calling again on a future occasion.

_Oct. 18th_. I sent Sheldon a statement of my Aldersgate-street
researches the day before yesterday morning. He went carefully through
the information I had collected, and approved my labours.

"You've done uncommonly well, considering the short time you've been at
the work," he said; "and you've reason to congratulate yourself upon
having your ground all laid out for you, as my ground has never been
laid out for me. The Meynell branch seems to be narrowing itself into
the person of Christian Meynell's daughter and her descendants, and our
most important business now will be to find out when, where, and whom
she married, and what issue arose from such marriage. This I think you
ought to be able to do."

I shook my head rather despondingly.

"I don't see any hope of finding out the name of the young woman's
husband," I said, "unless I can come across another oldest inhabitant,
gifted with a better memory for names and places than my obliging
Sparsfield or my surly Grewter."

"There are the almshouses," said Sheldon; "you haven't tried them yet."

"No; I suppose I must go in for the almshouses," I replied, with the
sublime resignation of the pauper, whose poverty must consent to
anything; "though I confess that the prosiness of the almshouse
intellect is almost more than I can endure."

"And how do you know that you mayn't get the name of the place out of
your friend the carver and gilder?" said George Sheldon; "he has given
you some kind of clue in telling you that the name ends in Cross. He
said he should know the name if he heard it; why not try him with it?"

"But in order to do that, I must know the name myself," replied I, "and
in that ease I shouldn't want the aid of my Sparsfield."

"You are not great in expedients," said Sheldon, tilting back his
chair, and taking a shabby folio from a shelf of other shabby folios.
"This is a British gazetteer," he said, turning to the index of the
work before him. "We'll test the ancient Sparsfield's memory with every
Cross in the three Ridings, and if the faintest echo of the name we
want still li