to protect them, for their sake as well as for his own.  He had other reasons also for not returning immediately to town.  It might hereafter be expedient to show that he had really been to Midlandshire, where he had given out he had designed to go; and, moreover, though his purpose was relentless as respected Solomon, he did not perhaps care to be in a house where hourly suggestions would be dropped as to the whereabouts of his victim, or the fate that had happened to him.  Harry and her son might even not have gone to Gethin, and in that case their apprehensions and surmises would have been insupportable.

Richard was more human than he would fain believe himself to be.  Though he had gone to bed so inexorable of purpose, it had been somewhat shaken through the long hours of a night in which he had slept but little, and waked to think on what his feverish dreams had dwelt upon—­the fate of his unhappy foe, perishing slowly beside his useless treasure.  More than once, indeed, the impulse had been strong upon him that very morning to send word anonymously where Solomon was to be found to the police at Plymouth.  Remorse had not as yet become chronic with him, but it seized him by fits and starts.

There had been a time when he had looked (through his prison bars) on all men with rage and hatred; but now he caught himself, as it were, at attempts at self-justification with respect to the retribution he had exacted even from his enemy.  Had he not been rendered miserable, he argued, supremely wretched, for more than half his lifetime, through this man’s agency? for it was certain that Solomon had sworn falsely, in the spirit if not in the letter, and caused him to be convicted of a crime which his rival was well aware he had not in intention committed.  His conduct toward him on the occasion of his arrest had also been most brutal and insulting; while, after conviction had been obtained, this wretch’s malice, as Mr. Dodge had stated, had known no cessation.  In the arms of his young bride he had been deaf to the piteous cry of a mother beseeching for her only son.

But, on the other hand, had not he (Richard) deeply wronged this man in the first instance?  Had he not robbed him—­for so much at least must Solomon have known—­of the love of his promised wife?  If happiness from such an ill-assorted union was not to have been anticipated, still, had he not rendered it impossible?  If their positions had been reversed, would not he have exacted expiation from such an offender to the uttermost?  He would doubtless have scorned to twist the law as Solomon had done, and make it, as it were, the crooked instrument of his revenge.  He would not, of course, have evoked its aid at all.  But was that to be placed to his credit?  He had put himself above the law throughout his life; he had never acknowledged any authority save that of his own selfish will; nay, he owned to himself that his bitterness against his unhappy victim had been caused not so much by the wrong