After sleeping about an hour, he arose considerably refreshed in body; but the agony of mind, although diminished in its strength by its own previous paroxysms, was still intense and bitter.  He got up, surveyed himself once more in the glass, adjusted his dress, and helped himself to a glass or two of Madeira, which was his usual specific after these internal conflicts.

This day, however, was destined to be one of trial to him, although by no means his last; neither was it ordained to bring forth the final ordeals that awaited him.  He had scarcely time to reflect upon the measures which, under the present circumstances, he ought to pursue, although he certainly was engaged in considering the matter, when Gibson once more entered to let him know that a gentleman requested the favor of a short interview.

“What gentleman?  Who is he?  I’m not in a frame of mind to see any stranger—­I mean, Gibson, that I’m not well.”

“Sorry, to hear it, sir; shall I tell the gentleman you can’t see him?”

“Yes—­no—­stay; do you know who he is?”

“He is the gentleman, sir, who has been stopping for some time at the Mitre.”

“What!” exclaimed the baronet, bouncing to his feet.

“Yes, sir.”

If some notorious felon, red with half-a-dozen murders, and who, having broken jail, left an empty noose in the hands of the hangman, had taken it into his head to return and offer himself up for instant execution to the aforesaid hangman, and eke to the sheriff, we assert that neither sheriff nor hangman, nor hangman nor sheriff, arrange them as you may, could feel a thousandth part of the astonishment which seized Sir Thomas Gourlay on learning the fact conveyed to him by Gibson.  Sir Thomas, however, after the first natural start, became, if we may use the expression, deadly, fearfully calm.  It was not poor, contemptible Crackenfudge he had to deal with now, but the prime offender, the great felon himself, the author of his shame, the villain who poured in the fire of perdition upon his heart, who blasted his hopes, crumbled into ruin all his schemes of ambition for his daughter, and turned her very name into a byword of pollution and guilt.  This was the man whom he was now about to get into his power; the man who, besides, had on a former occasion bearded and insulted him to his teeth;—­the skulking adventurer afraid to disclose his name—­the low-born impostor, living by the rinsings of foul and fetid teeth—­the base upstart—­the thief—­the man who robbed and absconded from his employer; and this wretch, this cipher, so low in the scale of society and life, was the individual who had left him what he then felt himself to be—­a thing crushed, disgraced, trodden in the dust—­and then his daughter!——­

“Gibson,” said he, “show him into a room—­say I will see him presently, in about ten minutes or less; deliver this message, and return to me.”

In a few moments Gibson again made his appearance.