On referring to Sheldon's letter I found that the next people to be looked up were descendants of Brice the lawyer; so I devoted my breakfast-hour to the cultivation of an intimacy with the oldest of the waiters—a very antique specimen of his brotherhood, with a white stubble upon his chin and a tendency to confusion of mind in the matter of forks and spoons.
"Do you know, or have you ever known, an attorney of the name of Brice in this town?" I asked him.
He rubbed the white stubble contemplatively with his hand, and then gave his poor old head a dejected shake. I felt at once that I should get very little good out of him.
"No," he murmured despondently, "not that I can call to mind."
I should like to know what he could call to mind, piteous old meanderer!
"And yet you belong to Ullerton, I suppose?"
"Yes; and have belonged to it these seventy-five years, man and boy;" whereby, no doubt, the dreary confusion of the unhappy being's mind. Figurez donc, mon cher. Qui-que-ce-soit, fifty-five years or so of commercial breakfasts and dinners in such a place as Ullerton! Five-and-fifty years of steaks and chops; five-and-fifty years of ham and eggs, indifferently buttered toasts, and perennial sixes of brandy-and-water! After rambling to and fro with spoons and forks, and while in progress of clearing my table, and dropping the different items of my breakfast equipage, the poor soddened faded face of this dreary wanderer became suddenly illumined with a faint glimmer that was almost the light of reason.
"There were a Brice in Ullerton when I were a lad; I've heard father tell on him," he murmured slowly.
"An attorney?"
"Yes. He were a rare wild one, he were! It was when the Prince of Wales were Regent for his poor old mad father, as the saying is, and folks was wilder like in general in those times, and wore spencers—lawyer Brice wore a plum-coloured one."