Clear!--clear as noonday! And--what did it all mean, and imply, and what bearing had it on Braden or Brake's death?
Before he ate his cold beef, Bryce had copied the entry from the reprinted register, and had satisfied himself that Ransford was not a name known to that village--Mark Ransford was the only person of the name mentioned in the register.

And his lunch done, he set off for the vicarage again, intent on getting further information, and before he reached the vicarage gates noticed, by accident, a place whereat he was more likely to get it than from the vicar--who was a youngish man.

At the end of the few houses between the inn and the bridge he saw a little shop with the name Charles Claybourne painted roughly above its open window.

In that open window sat an old, cheery-faced man, mending shoes, who blinked at the stranger through his big spectacles.
Bryce saw his chance and turned in--to open the book and point out the marriage entry.
"Are you the Charles Claybourne mentioned there ?" he asked, without ceremony.
"That's me, sir!" replied the old shoemaker briskly, after a glance.
"Yes--right enough!" "How came you to witness that marriage ?" inquired Bryce.
The old man nodded at the church across the way.
"I've been sexton and parish clerk two-and-thirty years, sir," he said.
"And I took it on from my father--and he had the job from his father." "Do you remember this marriage ?" asked Bryce, perching himself on the bench at which the shoemaker was working.

"Twenty-two years since, I see." "Aye, as if it was yesterday!" answered the old man with a smile.