oblivious of the fable of the frogs who could see no fun in a game which was death to them; for, as we have indicated, the opinion of a great majority was against the claim of the young woman:  nor would the decision have been suspended that day, had not Mr. Andrews risen and made a statement—­perhaps as fictitious as a counsel’s conscience would permit—­to the effect that the agent (Mr. White) had procured some trace of the butler Cowie, who could throw more light on the case than Death had done, and that if some time were accorded to complete the inquiry, something might turn up which would alter the complexion even of this Protean mystery.  The request was granted.

But, in truth, Mr. Andrews’ suggestion was simply a bit of ingenuity, intended to ward off an unfavourable judgment, and allow a development of the chapter of accidents;—­a wise policy; for as the womb of Time is never empty, so Fate writes in the morning a chapter of every man’s life of a day, at which in the evening he is sometimes a little surprised.  No trace had yet been got of Cowie; it was not even known whether he was alive.  But if we throw some fourteen days into the wallet-bag of Saturn, we may come to a day whereupon a certain person, in an inn far down in a valley of Westmoreland, and in the little town called Kirby Lonsdale, was busy reading the Caledonian Mercury—­for it was not more easy to say where the winged Mercury of that time would not go, than it is to tell where a certain insect without wings, “which aye travels south,” might not be found in England as an immigrant.  It was at least no wonder that the paper should contain an account of the romance wrapped up in the case Napier versus Napier; and certainty, if we could have judged from the face of the individual, we would have set him down as one given to the reading of riddles; for, after he had perused the paragraph, he looked as if he knew more about that case than all the fifteen, with the macers to boot.  Nor was he contented with an indication of a mere look of wisdom:  he actually burst out into a laugh—­an expression wondrously unsuited to the gravity of the subject.  You who read this will no doubt suspect that we are merely shading this man for the sake of effect:  and this is true; but you are to remember that, while we are chroniclers of things mysterious, we work for the advantage to you of putting into your power to venture a shrewd guess; in making which, you are only working in the destined vocation of man, for the world is only guesswork all over, and you yourself are only guesswork as a part of it.  The reader of the Mercury was verily Mr. John Cowie, whilom butler to Mr. John Napier, and now waiter in the Lonsdale Arms of the obscure Kirby—­a place like Peebles, where, if you wanted to deposit a secret, you could do so by crying it out at the market-cross; and, moreover, he was verily in possession of the key to the Napier mystery.