"You are sure he was buried at Calais?"
"Yes, as sure as I can be of anything. Travelling was no easy matter in those days, and in foreign parts there was nothing but diligences, which I've heard say were the laziest-going vehicles ever invented. There was no one to bring poor Sam's remains back to England, for his mother was dead, and his two sisters were settled somewhere down in Yorkshire."
In Yorkshire! I am afraid I looked rather sheepish when Mr. Sparsfield senior mentioned this particular county, for my thoughts took wing and were with Charlotte Halliday before the word had well escaped his lips.
"Miss Meynell settled in Yorkshire, did she?" I asked.
"Yes, she married some one in the farming way down there. Her mother was a Yorkshirewoman, and she and her sister went visiting among her mother's relations, and never came back to London. One of them married, the other died a spinster."
"Do you remember the name of the man she married?"
"No," replied Mr. Sparsfield, "I can't say that I do."
"Do you remember the name of the place she went to—the town or village, or whatever it was?"
"I might remember it if I heard it," he responded thoughtfully; "and I ought to remember it, for I've heard Sam Meynell talk of his sister Charlotte's home many a time. She was christened Charlotte, you see, after the Queen. I've a sort of notion that the name of the village was something ending in Cross, as it might be Charing Cross, or Waltham Cross."
This was vague, but it was a great deal more than I had been able to extort from Mr. Grewter. I took a second cup of the sweet warm liquid which my new friends called tea, in order to have an excuse for loitering, while I tried to obtain more light from the reminiscences of the old frame-maker.