“Poor fellow!  Has he any relatives?”

“Oh yes, Sir; a wife and son—­a very handsome, nice young gentleman.”

“Then his widow will be rich, I suppose?”

“Oh, pray, don’t call her a widow yet, Sir; let us hope her husband may be found.  It’s a dreadful thing to be drowned like that on a Sunday morning; and for one who knows the cliff path so well as he did, too.  He was a hard man, and no favorite, but one forgets that now, of course.”

“You have also forgotten the Harvey Sauce, my good girl; oblige me by bringing it, will you?” said Mr. Balfour, beginning to whistle something which did not sound like a psalm tune.  “You must excuse my hard-heartedness, but I had not the pleasure of knowing this gentleman.”

An hour afterward the solitary guest had left the inn, and was on his road to Plymouth.  His departure caused little surprise, for the weather was such as to induce no visitor to prolong his stay.

Whether from his long enforced abstinence from society, or from the unwelcome nature of his thoughts, Robert Balfour was always disinclined to be alone.  His expeditions with Charley in search of pleasure had been, though he did not find pleasure, more agreeable to him than the being left to his own resources; and now this was more the case than ever.  He preferred even such company as that which the smoking-room of an hotel afforded to none at all.  The voices of his fellow-creatures could not shape themselves, as every inarticulate sound did to his straining ear, into groans and feeble cries for aid.  Not twenty-four hours had elapsed since his prisoner was placed in hold, so that such sounds of weakness and agony must have been in every sense chimerical; and yet he heard them.  What, then, if these echoes from the tomb should always be heard?  A terrible idea indeed, but one which bred no repentance.  It was not likely that remorse should seize him in the very place where his hated foe had clutched and consigned him to his living grave.

The hotel at which he now put up was the same at which he had then lodged; this public room was the same in which he had smoked his last cigar upon his fatal visit to the Miners’ Bank.  He had had only one companion then, but now it was full of people.  By their talk it was evident that they were townsfolk, and all known to one another; in fact, it was a tradesmen’s club, which met at the George and Vulture on Sunday nights through the winter months.  In spite of his willingness to be won from his thoughts, he could not fix his attention on the small local gossip that was going on about him.  Men came in and out without his observing them; and indeed it was not easy to take note of faces through the cloud of smoke that filled the room; he was fast relapsing into his own reflections, wondering what Solomon was doing in the dark, and if he slept much, when an event occurred which roused him as thoroughly as the prick of a lance or a sudden douche of cold water.