“After Mr. Saltram?”

“Yes; I do not consider him in a fitting condition to travel alone.  I hope to be in time to prevent his doing anything rash.”

“But how will you find him?”

“I must make a round of the hotels till I discover his head-quarters.  Good night.”

“Let me order my carriage to take you to the station.”

“A thousand thanks, but I shall be there before your carriage would be ready.  I can pick up a cab close by and shall have time to call at my lodgings for a carpet-bag.  Once more, good night.”

It was still dark when Gilbert Fenton arrived at Liverpool.  He threw himself upon a sofa in the waiting-room, where he had an hour or so of uncomfortable, unrefreshing sleep, and then roused himself and went out to begin his round of the hotels.

A surly fly-driver of unknown age and prodigious deafness carried him from house to house; first to all the principal places of entertainment, aristocratic, family, and commercial; then to more obscure taverns and boarding-houses, until the sun was high and the commerce of Liverpool in full swing; and at all these places Gilbert questioned night-porters, and chief waiters, and head chamber-maids, until his brain grew dizzy by mere repetition of his questions; but no positive tidings could he obtain of John Saltram.  There was a coffee-house near the quay where it seemed just possible that he had slept; but even here the description was of the vaguest, and the person described might just as well have been John Smith as John Saltram.  Gilbert dismissed the fly-man and his vehicle at last, thoroughly wearied out with that morning’s work.

He went to one of the hotels, took a hasty breakfast, and then hurried off to the offices belonging to the owners of the Oronoco.

That vessel had started for New York at nine o’clock on the previous morning, and John Saltram had gone with her.  His name was the last on the list of passengers; he had only taken his passage an hour before the steamer left Liverpool, but there his name was in black and white.  The names of Percival Nowell, and of Mrs. Holbrook, his daughter, were also in the list.  The whole business was clear enough, and there was nothing more that Gilbert could do.  Had John Saltram been strong and well, his friend would have felt nothing but satisfaction in the thought that he was going in the same vessel with Marian, and would without doubt bring her back in triumph.  But the question of his health was a painful one to contemplate.  Could he, or could he not endure the strain that he had put upon himself within the last eight-and-forty hours?  In desperate straits men can do desperate things—­there was always that fact to be remembered; but still John Saltram might break down under the burden he had taken upon himself; and when Gilbert went back to London that afternoon he was sorely anxious about this feeble traveller.

He found a letter from him at the lodgings in Wigmore-street; a hurried letter written at Liverpool the night before John Saltram’s departure.  He had arrived there too late to get on board the Oronoco that night, and had ascertained that the vessel was to leave at nine next morning.