ain't it? I borrowed the
original, sir, had it carefully reproduced in facsimile, and persuaded
my proprietor to go to the expense of having sufficient copies struck
off on this specially prepared paper to give one away with every copy of
the _Monitor_ that we shall print to-night. Five thousand copies, Mr.
Brent! That facsimile, sir, will be all over Hathelsborough by supper
time!"

"Smart!" observed Brent. "Top-hole idea, Peppermore. And you hope----?"

"There aren't so many typewriters in Hathelsborough as all that,"
replied Peppermore. "I hope that somebody'll come forward who can tell
something. Do you notice, sir, that this has been done--the original, I
mean--on an old-fashioned machine, and that the lettering is
considerably worn, sir? I hope the _Monitor's_ efforts will solve the
mystery!"

"Much obliged to you," said Brent. "There's a lot of spade-work to
do--yet."

He was thinking over the best methods of further attempts on that
spade-work, when, late that evening, he received a note from Queenie
Crood. It was confined to one line:

To-morrow usual place three urgent--Q.

CHAPTER XVI

THE CASTLE WALL

Brent went to bed that night wondering what it was that Queenie Crood
wanted. Since their first meeting in the Castle grounds they had met
frequently. He was getting interested in Queenie: she developed on
acquaintance. Instead of being the meek and mild mouse of Simon Crood's
domestic hearth that Brent had fancied her to be on his visit to the
Tannery, he was discovering possibilities in her that he had not
suspected. She had spirit and imagination and a continually rebellious
desire to get out of Simon Crood's cage and spread her wings in
flight--anywhere, so long as Hathelsborough was left behind. She had
told Brent plainly that she thought him foolish for buying property in
the town; what was there in that rotten old borough, said Queenie, to
keep any man of spirit and enterprise there? Brent argued the point in
his downright way: it was his job, he conceived, to take up his cousin's
work where it had been laid down; he was going to regenerate
Hathelsborough.

"And that you'll never do!" affirmed Queenie. "You might as well try to
blow up the Castle keep with a halfpenny cracker! Hathelsborough people
are like the man in the Bible--they're joined to their idols. You can
try and try, and you'll only break your heart, or your back, in the
effort, just as Wallingford would have done.