Middleton; but you are welcome."
"I thank you, Mr. Eldredge, and may fairly say that the circumstances to
which you allude make me accept your hospitality with a warmer feeling
than I otherwise might. Strangers, meeting in a strange land, have a
sort of tie in their foreignness to those around them, though there be no
positive relation between themselves."
"We are friends, then?" said Mr. Eldredge, looking keenly at Middleton,
as if to discover exactly how much was meant by the compact. He
continued, "You know, I suppose, Mr. Middleton, the situation in which I
find myself on returning to my hereditary estate; which has devolved to
me somewhat unexpectedly by the death of a younger man than myself.
There is an old flaw here, as perhaps you have been told, which keeps me
out of a property long kept in the guardianship of the crown, and of a
barony, one of the oldest in England. There is an idea--a tradition--a
legend, founded, however, on evidence of some weight, that there is still
in existence the possibility of finding the proof which we need, to
confirm our cause."
"I am most happy to hear it, Mr. Eldredge," said Middleton.
"But," continued his host, "I am bound to remember and to consider that
for several generations there seems to have been the same idea, and the
same expectation; whereas nothing has ever come of it.
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