“He has come to annoy me about that confounded magistracy, I suppose,” exclaimed the baronet.  “Have you any notion what the worthless scoundrel wants, Gibson?”

“Not the least, your honor, but he seems brimful of something.”

“Ay, brimful of ignorance, and of impertinence, too, if he durst show it; yes, and of as much pride and oppression as could well be contained in a miserable carcass like his.  As he is a sneaking, vigilant rascal, however, and has a great deal of the spy in his composition, it is not impossible that he may be able to give me some information touching the disappearance of Miss Gourlay.”

Gibson, after making his bow, withdrew, and the redoubtable Crackenfudge was ushered into the presence of the baronet.

The first thing the former did was to survey the countenance of his patron, for as such he wished to consider him and to find him.  There, then, Sir Thomas sat, stern but indifferent, with precisely the expression of a tiger lying gloomily in his den, the natural ferocity “in grim repose” for the time, but evidently ready to blaze up at anything that might disturb or provoke him.  Had Crackenfudge been gifted with either tact or experience, or any enlarged knowledge of the human heart, especially of the deep, dark, and impetuous one that beat in the bosom then before him, he would have studied the best and least alarming manner of conveying intelligence calculated to produce such terrific effects upon a man like Sir Thomas Gourlay.  Of this, however, he knew nothing, although his own intercourse with him might have well taught him the necessary lesson.

“Well, Mr. Crackenfudge,” said the latter, without moving, “what’s wrong now?  What’s the news?”

“There’s nothing wrong, Sir Thomas, and a’ve good news.”

The baronet’s eye and brow lost some of their gloom; he arose and commenced, as was his custom, to walk across the room.

“Pray what is this good news, Mr. Crackenfudge?  Will you be kind enough, without any unnecessary circumlocution, to favor your friends with it?”

“With pleasure, Sir Thomas, because a’ know you are anxious to hear it, and it deeply concerns you.”

Sir Thomas paused, turned round, looked at him for a moment with an impatient scowl; but in the meaningless and simpering face before him he could read nothing but what appeared to him to be an impudent chuckle of satisfaction; and this, indeed, was no more than what Crackenfudge felt, who had altogether forgotten the nature of the communication he was about to make, dreadful and disastrous as it was, and thought only of the claim upon Sir Thomas’s influence which he was about to establish with reference to the magistracy.  It was the reflection, then, of this train of little ambition which Sir Thomas read in his countenance, and mistook for some communication that might relieve him, and set his mind probably at ease.  The scowl we allude to accordingly disappeared, and Sir Thomas, after the glance we have recorded, said, checking himself into a milder and more encouraging tone: