So Dick persevered for fully twelve months in his eager attempt, by hook and by crook, to trace his own family up to Lionel of Clarence, upon whom Mr. Plantagenet himself had early fixed—at pure haphazard—as the special transmitter of the Plantagenet blood to the later branches of the House, himself included. The longer Dick worked at it, too, the more confident he became of ultimate success. Step by step turned out right. He had brought the thing down, he told Mary, to a moral certainty; only one link now remained to complete the entire pedigree. That's always the way, it may be mentioned parenthetically, with your doubtful genealogy; there's only one link missing—but, unfortunately, that's the link on proof of which the whole chain is dependent. And very naturally, too: for this is how the thing works out. You track your own genealogy, let us say, back to a person named Plantagenet, who lived some time in the sixteenth century, and with whom you are really and undoubtedly connected by an unbroken and traceable ancestral series. Then you track the family tree of Lionel of Clarence forward, in the opposite direction, to a real and historical Plantagenet who 'flourished,' as the books say, near the end of the fifteenth century. After that you say: 'If my ancestor, the sixteenth-century Plantagenet, turns out to be the son of Lionel's descendant in the fifteenth century—as is extremely probable—why, then, it's all made out—I'm descended direct from Lionel of Clarence; and in any case, don't you see, there's only one link missing!' Wise genealogists usually abstain on purpose from the attempt to hunt up that fatal missing link; they know right well that the safest plan is to assume identity, while efforts at proving it are frequently disastrous. But Dick was still young, and not perhaps overwise; so once he had brought down the matter to a question of a solitary missing link, he couldn't rest night or day till he had finally settled it.

One evening he returned home from the office to Maud, overflowing with a new and most important discovery.

'Well, the thing's all but proved, at last!' he cried in a triumphant voice, as he kissed her warmly; 'at least, that is to say, I've found a valuable clue that will decide the matter finally one way or the other. I've discovered a conveyance of the sixteenth century, dated 1533—here's a verbatim copy of it—which describes Thomas Plantagenet, our great-great-grandfather's grandfather, as being really the son of Giles Plantagenet, the missing-link man, who is said in it to have owned a house—and this, you will see, is the new and important point—at Framlingham, in Suffolk. He seems to have been some sort of a petty tradesman.

Where Giles first came from, we had till now no means of knowing. But after this clue, all we've got to do next is just to hunt up the local records at Framlingliam and find out that this Giles Plantagenet, already known to us, was the son of that Geoffrey Plantagenet of Richmond, in Yorkshire, whom I showed long ago to have been the last traceable descendant of Lionel of Clarence, and concerning whom Lysons says, without a shadow of authority, decissit sine prole—he died without issue.'

'It seems rather a leap, though, for those days, doesn't it,' Mary put in timidly, for she dreaded the effect of a disappointment upon Dick's nervous nature, 'from Richmond to Framlingham? I thought people rarely went then much beyond their own county.'

'That was true, no doubt, for the middle and lower classes,' Dick answered with a faint tinge of Plantagenet pride in his voice; 'but hardly even then, I should say, for people of such distinction as Geoffrey Plantagenet. Gentlemen of high rank, and members of the peerage and the Royal Family, had manors, you know, in many different counties, and moved on from one to another from time to time, or left them about by will to various sons and daughters. We mustn't judge such great folk by the common analogies of ordinary people.'

'Still, Dick,' Maud interposed, a little startled herself, 'even if Mary's objection doesn't hold good, it does seem a little odd, doesn't it, that Giles Plantagenet should be a petty tradesman at Framlingham, if he was really the son of such a man as Geoffrey, whom we know to have been a county gentleman of distinction in Yorkshire?'

'I don't think so at all,' Dick answered with a little surprise. 'In those days, you see, Maud, when there was no middle class, people went up and down easily. Attainder was so common, and loss of estates such an every-day occurrence, that the vicissitudes of families must often have been much more rapid and startling than nowadays. Moreover, it's no use arguing beforehand about a plain question of fact. It was so, or it wasn't. I shall soon find out which. The records are almost sure to be preserved at Framlingham, because it was the seat of the Howards; and I shall go down there next Bank Holiday and settle the question. After that, I'll publish the result of my search; and then nobody will ever be able to say in future we made a false pretence of being real royal Plantagenets.'

He spoke so confidently that he really frightened poor Mary. She couldn't help thinking what a terrible shock it would be to him if by any chance he should turn out after all to be mistaken, and if Giles Plantagenet should prove to be other than the son of Geoffrey.

So real did this danger appear to her, indeed, that as Bank Holiday approached, and Dick talked more and more certainly of his visit to Framling-ham, she spoke quite seriously on the matter to Maud.