"And now to change the subject to something more personal to ourselves.
"P.S.--If any further evidence were needed to prove that the story 'How, and Why' is based on the Loudwater Tragedy, one might find it in several of the thinly-veiled names which the anonymous writer has thought fit to make use of. Thus, in the story Mr. Melray becomes 'Mr. Melville'; the head clerk, Mr. Cray, is changed into 'Mr. Day'; Silston, the chief constable, becomes 'Dilston'; while, in place of Merehampton as the _locale_ of the narrative, we are introduced to the town of 'Hampton Magna.'"
A few days later the train deposited Winslade at Solchester, one of those third-rate provincial towns where it is next to impossible to hide anything from one's neighbours, and where it seems to be the rule for everybody to know everything, or to assume that they do, about everybody else's business.
From this it followed that Phil experienced little difficulty in finding plenty of people ready and willing tell him all there was to tell about the early life and antecedents of the Denia Lidington who later on became the wife of Mr. James Melray. The fact of her husband's tragical fate and the mystery which still enshrouded his death, had served to bring everything connected with her freshly to people's minds; indeed, the good folk of Solchester had come to look upon the Loudwater Tragedy as being a matter which concerned them nearly, if not quite, as much as their Merehampton neighbours.
The one fresh fact pertinent to his inquiry elicited by Winslade was that, while still little more than a school-girl, Miss Lidington had had a very pronounced flirtation with a handsome, but impecunious, ne'er-do-well, Evan Wildash by name, which had so alarmed the girl's uncle that he had sought out the young fellow and had there and then made him an offer of two hundred pounds on condition that he took himself off for good and all to one or other of the colonies. This Wildash had made no difficulty in doing, and, a couple of years later, tidings, the authenticity of which nobody had seen reason to doubt, had come to hand of his death by fever at the Cape. In any case, Evan Wildash had never been seen in Solchester again.