"Eh, bless you, no!" answered Mrs. Hamthwaite. "I'll tell it wherever you like, master—before Lawyer Tallington, or the magistrates, or the crowner, or anybody! But I'll tell you what, if you'll take a bit of advice from an old woman—you're a sharp-looking young man, and I'll tell you what I should do if I were in your place—now then!"
"Well, what?" asked Brereton good-humouredly.
Mrs. Hamthwaite clapped him on the shoulder as she opened the door for her visitors.
"Find that tall man in the grey clothes!" she said. "Get hold of him! He's the chap you want!"
Brereton went silently away, meditating on the old woman's last words.
"But where are we to find him?" he suddenly exclaimed. "Who is he?"
"I don't think that puzzles me," remarked Avice. "He's the man who sent the nine hundred pounds."
Brereton smote his stick on the heather at their feet.
"By George!—I never thought of that!" he exclaimed. "I shouldn't wonder!—I shouldn't wonder at all. Hooray!—we're getting nearer and nearer to something."
But he knew that still another step was at hand—an unpleasant, painful step—when, on getting back to Bent's, an hour later, Bent told him that Lettie had been cajoled into fixing the day of the wedding, and that the ceremony was to take place with the utmost privacy that day week.