It had been arranged that Talbot should secure a state-room on the Aladdin to sail on the following day, and make an arrangement with the steward to admit Mr. Belcher to it on his arrival, and assist in keeping him from sight.

Mr. Belcher sent back his carriage by the uppermost ferry, ate a wretched dinner, and threw himself upon his bed, where he tossed his feverish limbs until day-break.  It was a night thronged with nervous fears.  He knew that New York would resound with his name on the following day.  Could he reach his state-room on the Aladdin without being discovered?  He resolved to try it early the next morning, though he knew the steamer would not sail until noon.  Accordingly, as the day began to break, he rose and looked out of his dingy window.  The milk-men only were stirring.  At the lower end of the street he could see masts, and the pipes of the great steamers, and a ferry-boat crossing to get its first batch of passengers for an early train.  Then a wretched man walked under his window, looking for something,—­hoping, after the accidents of the evening, to find money for his breakfast.  Mr. Belcher dropped him a dollar, and the man looked up and said feebly:  “May God bless you, sir!”

This little benediction was received gratefully.  It would do to start on.  He felt his way down stairs, called for his reckoning, and when, after an uncomfortable and vexatious delay, he had found a sleepy, half-dressed man to receive his money, he went out upon the street, satchel in hand, and walked rapidly toward the slip where the Aladdin lay asleep.

Talbot’s money had done its work well, and the fugitive had only to make himself known to the officer in charge to secure an immediate entrance into the state-room that had been purchased for him.  He shut to the door and locked it; then he took off his clothes and went to bed.

Mr. Belcher’s entrance upon the vessel had been observed by a policeman, but, though it was an unusual occurrence, the fact that he was received showed that he had been expected.  As the policeman was soon relieved from duty, he gave the matter no farther thought, so that Mr. Belcher had practically made the passage from his library to his state-room unobserved.

After the terrible excitements of the two preceding days, and the sleeplessness of the night, Mr. Belcher with the first sense of security fell into a heavy slumber.  All through the morning there were officers on the vessel who knew that he was wanted, but his state-room had been engaged for an invalid lady, and the steward assured the officers that she was in the room, and was not to be disturbed.

The first consciousness that came to the sleeper was with the first motion of the vessel as she pushed out from her dock.  He rose and dressed, and found himself exceedingly hungry.  There was nothing to do, however, but to wait.  The steamer would go down so as to pass the bar at high tide, and lay to for the mails and the latest passengers, to be brought down the bay by a tug.  He knew that he could not step from his hiding until the last policeman had left the vessel, with the casting off of its tender, and so sat and watched from the little port-hole which illuminated his room the panorama of the Jersey and the Staten Island shores.