ngers in his feeble old brain, we'll awaken it." My patron
ran his finger-nail along one of the columns of the index.

"Just take your pencil and write down the names as I call them," he
said. "Here we are--Aylsey Cross; and here we are again--Bowford Cross,
Callindale Cross, Huxter's Cross, Jarnam Cross, Kingborough Cross."
Then, after a careful examination of the column, he exclaimed, "Those
are all the Crosses in the county of York, and it will go hard with us
if you or I can't find the descendants of Christian Meynell's daughter
at one of them. The daughter herself may be alive, for anything we
know."

"And how about the Samuel Meynell who died at Calais? You'll have to
find some record of his death, won't you? I suppose in these cases one
must prove everything."

"Yes, I must prove the demise of Samuel," replied the sanguine
genealogist; "that part of the business I'll see to myself, while you
hunt out the female branch of the Meynells. I want an outing after a
long spell of hard work; so I'll run across to Calais and search for
the register of Samuel's interment. I suppose somebody took the trouble
to bury him, though he was a stranger in the land."

"And if I extort the name we want from poor old Sparsfield's
recollection?"

"In that case you can start at once for the place, and begin your
search on the spot. It can't be above fifty years since this woman
married, and there must be some inhabitant of the place old enough to
remember her. O, by the bye, I suppose you'll be wanting more cash for
expenses," added Mr. Sheldon, with a sigh. He took a five-pound note
from his pocket-book, and gave it to me with a piteous air of
self-sacrifice. I know that he is poor, and that whatever money he does
contrive to earn is extorted from the necessities of his needier
brethren. Some of this money he speculates upon the chances of the
Haygarthian succession, as he his speculated his money on worse chances
in the past. "Three thousand pounds!" he said to me, as he handed me
the poor little five-pound note; "think what a prize you are working
for, and work your hardest. The nearer we get to the end, the slower
our progress seems to me; and yet it has been very rapid progress,
considering all things."

So sentimental have I become, that I thought less of that possible
three thousand pounds than of the fact that I was likely to go to
Yorkshire, the county of Charlotte's birth, the county where she was
now staying. I remin