“Change for a pound!” he exclaimed, with a good deal of surprise.  “Why, from your appearance, poor fellow, I should scarcely suspect to find such a sum in your possession.  Did you expect to meet me here?”

“No, sir, I was on my way to the priest, to open my heart to him, for if I don’t, I know I’ll be ragin’ mad before forty-eight hours.  Oh, sir, if you have it, make haste; every minute may cost me a life that’s dearer to me a thousand times than my own.  Here’s the note, sir.”

The stranger took the note out of his hand, and on looking at the face of it made no observation, but, upon mechanically turning up the back, apparently without any purpose of examining it, he started, looked keenly at the man, and seemed sunk in the deepest possible amazement, not unrelieved, however, by an air of satisfaction.  The sudden and mysterious disappearance of Fenton, taken in connection with the discovery of the note which he himself had given him, and now in the possession of a man whose appearance was both desperate and suspicious, filled him with instant apprehensions for the safety of Fenton.

His brow instantly became stern, and in a voice full of the most unequivocal determination, he said,

“Pray, sir, how did you come by this note?”

“By the temptation of the devil; for although it was in my possession, it didn’t save my two other darlins from dying.  A piece of a slate would be as useful as it was, for I couldn’t change it—­I durstn’t.”

“You committed a robbery for this note, sir?”

The man glared at him with something like incipient fury, but paused, and looking on him with a more sorrowful aspect, replied,

“That is what the world will call it, I suppose; but if you wish to get anything out of me, change the tone of your voice.  I haven’t at the present time, much command over my temper, and I’m now a desperate man, though I wasn’t always so.  Either give me the change or the note back again.”

The stranger eyed him closely.  Although desperate, as he said, still there were symptoms of an honest and manly feeling, even in the very bursts of passion which he succeeded with such effort in restraining.

“I repeat it, that this note came into your hands by an act of robbery—­perhaps of murder.”

“Murder!” replied the man, indignantly.  “Give me back the note, sir, and provoke me no farther.”

“No,” replied the other, “I shall not; and you must consider yourself my prisoner.  You not only do not deny, but seem to admit, the charge of robbery, and you shall not pass out of my hands until you render me an account of the person from whom you took this note.  You see,” he added, producing a case of pistols—­for, in accordance with the hint he had received in the anonymous note, he resolved never to go out without them—­“I am armed, and that resistance is useless.”

The man gave a proud but ghastly smile, as he replied—­dropping his stick, and pulling from his bosom a pair of pistols much larger, and more dangerous than those of the stranger,