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"Good gracious, Edgar!" he said; "what is the matter? You have been working too hard of late."

"Perhaps so, sir," said Edgar; "however, I have enough to make me. Here is my dear mother fallen suddenly into a most terrible and distressing illness, from which, I fear, she will never recover."

Mr Tom Forster, who had nourished, as we have said, a secret passion for the lady, jumped up from his seat with a bound.

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Nothing so serious as that, my dear boy, I hope."

Edgar shook his head sadly, and passed his white hand over his forehead.

"Yes, indeed," he said, with a sad smile, which touched the old man to the heart; "she is my only relation-is the only one whom I have ever known; the only one who ever loved me, at least.”

"Your father, then, is dead, long ago?" said Old Daylight, interrogatively;—and the word brought back the dead woman he had seen. "Dead!" he murmured. "Dead enough! Will anything bring back the dead."

"Would to God something could !" said the barrister, with an earnestness that brought Tom Forster back from his wander'No; he is not dead, and she nearly is.

ings.
you see this paper?"

Look here!

Here he held out the Evening Meal, with his finger on a marked paragraph.

"My mother was quite well till this evening. As she was reading the paper I always bring home for her, her eye fell upon that paragraph."

And sure enough, Mr Edgar Wade's finger pointed out the very paragraph which had been received with such warm applause in the little circle ornamented by Mr Samuel Smiles, cabman!

Much as Mr Forster admired the press, he had been seldom so much astonished at its quickness as he was then. How men could get the type together and printed, let alone putting it into such wonderful English, was to him a matter of mystery. But all his wonder was absorbed in the more wonderful fact that the murder at Kensal-Green should have an effect, and

so sad an effect, upon the peaceful house of Mr Thomas Forster, who, with his brain full of his own inductive process, was about unravelling the mystery. Mrs Wade must, of course, have known something about that woman. Here, then, was a clue that Mr Brownjohn would have given his ears for!

The old man's eyes wandered over the paragraph, and his mind noted, in its own quiet way, the error at the end; but all that the philosophic detective could ask was, "Did your mother know her, then?"

"Know her! know the Widow Martin! of course she did. She was intimately connected with her; and she no sooner read of her dreadful death, than, with a scream, she fell in a fit. I rushed to her, and found her hand convulsively clasped upon that paragraph. Then I knew the cause."

"Knew the cause?" stammered Old Daylight, more and more puzzled; "knew the cause?"

"Of course I did. Madame Martin was my nurse!"

CHAPTER V.

EDGAR WADE SEEKS AN ADVISER.

A SECRET, as was sagely said in the last chapter, is a secret; and, whether it be good or bad, is often a trouble to the owner, even if he wishes to conceal it for honourable purposes. So it was with Old Forster. Events had succeeded themselves at such a rate during that eventful day, that, as he followed Edgar Wade up his own handsome stone staircase, he had need of undergoing a process-not unknown to him-of mentally shaking and pulling himself together.

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"Hallo!" said he to himself, "I had nearly let the cat out of the bag! Why is this old fellow so interested in this particular murder?' my boy will ask; for, although he is as innocent as a lamb, he is a barrister, and sharp-dev'lish sharp!"

All persons have a belief, which you shall not tear from them with red-hot pincers, that their own barrister, and particular lawyer or physician, know a great deal more than any one else's barrister, lawyer, or physician. It is a portion of our

conceit. Let us borrow Old Daylight's expression as we for a moment pause over it, and exclaim, "Poor human nature!"

But, sharp as Mr Edgar Wade was, he was so absorbed in his own misfortune, and his mother's sickness, that he never gave one thought to Daylight's agitation, and it is therefore to be presumed that he did not notice it. Old Forster hugged himself for his lucky escape, for he loved his hobby as much as he loved his secretly adopted son; and he feared that if his occupation as detective were found out, Edgar Wade would at once cut him.

"A high-spirited young chap like that," said Forster, "wouldn't go to consort with an old thief-taking, crime-tracking, murder-marking individual like myself! Not a bit. The wonder is he's never found it out. But he's a tip-top barrister, he is none of your Old Bailey prowlers. If he has anything to do with crime, it's the forging of a duke's will, or the running away of a baronet's wife with a young and spirited marquis-that's the game for him! High game, indeed! None of your low, vulgar murders."

But, after all, crime is a vulgar matter; and so the more reflective Daylight thought as he sat down in Edgar Wade's easy chair, and glanced round the barrister's room. Edgar, in the meantime, let down the flap of an antique cabinet, and, placing the light near him, arranged his letters properly, and then prepared to speak.

The room was well and substantially furnished, but still was the room of a student; although vases of flowers, and one or two feminine knick-nacks seemed, to the ordinary mind, to betray a woman's hand. But no woman had helped Edgar. His mind was feminine, delicate, fond of luxury and pretty adornments; while it was, on the other hand, vigorous and full of life. But there was more of the student than the man of the world in the room. Two or three fine mezzotints of judges were framed, and adorned the room; but there were none of Messrs Fores' celebrated pugilistic encounters, or portraits of celebrated fighters or wrestlers, or even of Captain Barclay walking his world-famed match; nor even those capital caricatures of the beaux of the day, which have descended to our time; nor of the spirited hunting or stage-coach adventures

then published by H. Alken. Nor were there any boxinggloves, single-sticks, and crossed foils in that room, as the observant eye of the old detective did not fail to note. Near one window was Edgar's standing desk, which he had brought from Cambridge with him; and above it a copper-plate of his old college, St Blazius; and on the side-shelf of the desk were recent editions of Coke and Blackstone, and the celebrated lawbook, "Sugden on Vendors," from which it is to be presumed Mr Edgar had been taking notes.

Mr Tom Forster sat down with some degree of relief, and looked round him. Suddenly he called out

"But Mrs Wade, Edgar-if she is ill or worse "

"If Mrs Wade rings," said Edgar, in a cold, dry tone, "she will be attended to. The nurse will go and see her."

Nurse! Had he left her to a nurse, and he such an affectionate fellow? Well, trouble had turned his head, strong as it was, and young as he was. Poor human nature!

"Now, look here," said Old Forster, bursting all over with suppressed filial affection-for whatever irritation he felt for the deceased Forster père, who, instead of enjoying himself like a rational being, had kept his money a secret, and made his son work like a slave, Daylight had a tender heart, full of real reverence for old people, and none the less because he was old and grey-headed himself—" Now, look here, Edgar, you're put out, you know you are. Keep your temper, my boy. Why call your dear mother-and a better lady never trod neat's leather-Mrs Wade? Why not, as always, mother?" "Why?" answered Edgar, still coldly. "Why?" "Look here".

Mr Forster was again about to reply, but the barrister stopped him.

"Why, my dear old friend-and here, I confess, I am compelled to plead to you as my old friend-because Mrs Wade is not my mother!"

"Poor human!

The old Bow Street officer did not finish his phrase; as he felt a fly might have knocked him down with an extension of one of its hind legs! He recovered himself, however.

"Now, look here," he began again; "you 're a clever fellow,

Edgar-a dev'lish clever fellow; but you work too hard, as they say in the slang dictionary"-(Forster was about to apologise for his too frequent use of the vulgar tongue, which he picked up in his work, and he put his fault on the slang dictionary)—“ you're off your head, you are; you don't know what you say. Not your mother!"

Old Daylight rubbed his hands as if he had said something utterly impossible to refute-as that the earth goes round the sun, or two and two make four.

"It's impossible,” he added.

The barrister merely looked at him with a quiet, sad, pitying expression.

"It seems impossible," he said; "but, nevertheless, it is true."

After this a fly might, after knocking Old Daylight down, have trampled him to pieces. Here were the two people he most admired in the world rejecting each other. Here was a pattern son throwing his mother to the winds. As for Forster, he could not believe it. His inductive process might have failed—the British constitution have broken up--the world itself have come to an end sooner. For Old Forster loved strongly where he did love, and never loved without respect.

But somehow, beyond this terrible new revelation, inextricably connected with it, arose the ghastly phantom of Estelle Martin, with its gaunt, thin figure, and its clasped hands. "Go on, Edgar, go on. I must only listen," was all he could

say.

"Was there anybody ever so troubled as I am?" said the barrister, fiercely. "Heaven seems to have a spite against me -against ME only."

He said this fiercely, as if he were very angry with heaven. "Against me more than against any one else," he repeated. "Heaven knows how I loved that woman-how, from the first time I could work, I sacrificed for her my energy, my talent, and my youth. I knew there was some dark story of wrong -that I could never see my father; and so I loved her more. I constituted myself my unknown father's judge; I blamed him for his desertion, his cruelty; in everything I was on my mother's side; and she-she from my very babyhood betrayed

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