Page:The Middle of Things - Fletcher (1922).djvu/99

 the seat of the Earl of Ellingham. Well, what I have to tell you has to do with them, and I shall have to go back a good way. Thirty-five years ago the head of the family was the seventh Earl, who was then getting on in life. He was a very overbearing, harsh old gentleman, not at all liked—the people here in Marketstoke, nearly all of them his tenants, used to be perpetually at variance with him about something or other; he was the sort of man who wanted to have his own way about everything. And he had trouble at home, at any rate with his elder son,—he only had two sons and no daughter,—and about the time I'm talking of it came to a head. Nobody ever knew exactly what it was all about, but it was well known that Lord Marketstoke—that was the elder son's name—and his father, the Earl, were at cross purposes, if not actually at daggers drawn, about something or other. And when Lord Marketstoke was about twenty five or twenty-six there was a great quarrel between them; it broke out one night, after dinner; the servants heard angry words between them. That night, gentlemen, Lord Marketstoke left the house and set off to London, and from that day to this he has never been heard of or seen again—hereabouts, at any rate."

Mr. Pawle, who was listening with the deepest interest and attention, glanced at Viner as if to entreat the same care on his part.

"I do remember something of this, now I come to think of it," he said. "There were some legal proceedings in connection with this disappearance, I believe, some years ago."

"Yes, sir—they were in the newspapers," asserted