Page:The Middle of Things - Fletcher (1922).djvu/102

 courts to get something done which presumed his death and let Mr. Charles come into the title and estates. And in the end that had been done, and Mr. Charles became the eighth Earl of Ellingham."

"I remember it now," muttered Mr. Pawle. "Yes—curious case. But it was proved to the court, I recollect, that everything possible had been done to find the missing heir—and without result."

"Just so, sir, and so Mr. Charles succeeded," asserted Mrs. Summers. "He was a very nice, pleasant man, not a bit like his father—a very good and considerate landlord, and much respected. But he's gone now—died three years ago; and his son, a young man of twenty-two or three, succeeded him—that's the present Earl, gentlemen. And of him we see very little; he scarcely ever stayed at Ellingham Park, except for a bit of shooting, since he came to the title. And now," she concluded, with a shrewd glance at the old lawyer, "I wonder if you see, sir, what it was that came into my mind when this Mr. John Ashton came here a few weeks ago, especially after I heard him say what he did, and after I saw how he was spending his time here?"

"I've no inkling, ma'am; I've no inkling!" said Mr. Pawle. "You wondered—"

"I wondered," murmured Mrs. Summers, bending closer to her listeners, "if the man who called himself John Ashton wasn't in reality the long-lost Lord Marketstoke."