Tom went out with him.  A new ray of hope had crossed the Major’s mind.  His meeting with Thurnall might he providential; for he recollected now, for the first time, Mellot’s parting hint.

“You knew Elsley Vavasour well?”

“No man better.”

“Did you think that there was any tendency to madness in him?”

“No more than in any other selfish, vain, irritable man, with a strong imagination left to run riot.”

“Humph! you seem to have divined his character.  May I ask you if you knew him before you met him at Aberalva?”

Tom looked up sharply in the Major’s face.

“You would ask, what cause I have for inquiring?  I will tell you presently.  Meanwhile I may say, that Mellot told me frankly that you had some power over him; and mentioned, mysteriously, a name—­John Briggs, I think—­which it appears that he once assumed.”

“If Mellot thought fit to tell you anything, I may frankly tell you all.  John Briggs is his real name.  I have known him from childhood.”  And then Tom poured into the ears of the surprised and somewhat disgusted Major all he had to tell.

“You have kept your secret mercifully, and used it wisely, sir; and I and others shall be always your debtors for it.  Now I dare tell you in turn, in strictest confidence of course—­”

“I am far too poor to afford the luxury of babbling.”

And the Major told him what we all know.

“I expected as much,” said he drily.  “Now, I suppose that you wish me to exert myself in finding the man?”

“I do.”

“Were Mrs. Vavasour only concerned, I should say—­Not I!  Better that she should never set eyes on him again.”

“Better, indeed!” said he bitterly:  “but it is I who must see him, if but for five minutes.  I must!”

“Major Campbell’s wish is a command.  Where have you searched for him?”

“At his address, at his publisher’s, at the houses of various literary friends of his, and yet no trace.”

“Has he gone to the Continent?”

“Heaven knows!  I have inquired at every passport office for news of any one answering his description; indeed, I have two detectives, I may tell you, at this moment, watching every possible place.  There is but one hope, if he be alive.  Can he have gone home to his native town?”

“Never!  Anywhere but there.”

“Is there any old friend of the lower class with whom he may have taken lodgings?”

Tom pondered.

“There was a fellow, a noisy blackguard, whom Briggs was asking after this very summer—­a fellow who went off from Whitbury with some players.  I know Briggs used to go to the theatre with him as a boy—­what was his name?  He tried acting, but did not succeed; and then became a scene-shifter, or something of the kind, at the Adelphi.  He has some complaint, I forget what, which made him an out-patient at St. Mumpsimus’s, some months every year.  I know that he was there this summer, for I wrote to ask, at Briggs’s request, and Briggs sent him a sovereign through me.”