The clatter of the trap in the door of his cell, as it fell in and formed a table, awoke him from this gloating dream.  “Supper,” said the warder, looking in at him through this orifice.  “What! you’re still brooding, are you?—­that’s bad;” then marched on to the next cell.

Some gruel and bread stood upon this little improvised side-board.  If they had been the greatest luxuries imaginable, he could not have swallowed a morsel.  The sunlight had faded away; his dream of retribution was over; he seemed to be touching the utmost verge of human wretchedness.  Was it possible to kill himself?  His neckerchief had been taken away; but he had his braces.  The gas-pipe was the only thing to which he could attach them, and it would never bear his weight.  He had read somewhere of some poor wretch who had suffocated himself by turning his tongue inward.  Had he determination enough for such a device as that?  Plenty.  His will was iron; he felt that; but it was set on something else than suicide—­that afterward, or death or life of any kind, he cared not what; but in the first place, and above all things, Vengeance!  In the mean time, there were twenty years in which to think upon it!  Twenty years!

The bar dined with the judge that night at Cross Key, and talked, among other things, “shop.”

“A curious case that of that young fellow, Yorke,” said one.  “I wonder whether he has been playing his game long with these competitive examinations?  That Chandos must be a queer one, too—­son of Lord Fitzbacon’s, is he not?”

“I dare say,” answered another, carelessly.  “It is only vicariously that the juvenile aristocracy ever get an appointment in these days, having no wits of their own.  This conviction will be a great blow to them.”

“Very good, Sharpshins! but you’d better not let old Bantam hear you, for he dearly loves the Swells.  By-the-by, what a pretty girl that witness for the defense was, who turned out to be for the prosecution, eh?”

“Yes, she upset her lover’s coach for him nicely.  Is it true, I wonder, that the little traitress is going to marry that dull, heavy fellow whom Smoothbore had such work to pump?  Gad! if I had been she, I’d have stuck to the other.”

“Yes; but kissing goes by favor.  She marries him next week, I hear.  Is there any thing of interest at Bodmin?”

“Nothing of interest to me, at all events.  Smoothbore and Balais get all there is between them, confound them!  I say, just pass that claret.”

Not another word about Richard.  The judge himself had forgotten him except as a case in his notes.  The jury forgot him in a week.  A murder of a shipwrecked sailor happened soon afterward on that coast, and became the talk of the country-side in his place.  The world went on its way, and never missed him; the rank closed up where he had used to march, and left no gap.

Richard Yorke was out of the world.