’I’ll go direct to London and see these people, and thence to Florence.  Gaetano Meloni—­he may be living—­who knows?  He will remember the priest who confessed him.  A present to a religious house may procure—­in a matter of justice, and where none can be prejudiced, for the case is very special—­a dispensation, if he be the very Charles Archer—­and he may—­why not?—­have disclosed all on his death-bed.  First, I shall see Mr. Dangerfield—­then those attorneys; and next make search in Florence; and, with the aid of whatever I can glean there, and from Irons, commence in England the intensest scrutiny to which a case was ever yet subjected.’

Had it not been so late when he found this letter on his return, he would have gone direct with it to the Brass Castle; but that being quite out of the question, he read it again and again.  It is wonderful how often a man will spell over and over the same commonplace syllables, if they happen to touch a subject vitally concerning himself, and what theories and speculations he will build upon the accidental turn of a phrase, or the careless dash of a pen.

As we see those wild animals walk their cages in a menagerie, with the fierce instincts of suppressed action rolling in the vexed eye and vibrating in every sinew, even so we behold this hero of the flashing glance and sable locks treading, in high excitement, the floor of the cedar parlour.  Every five minutes a new hope—­a new conjecture, and another scrutiny of the baronet’s letter, or of the certificate of Archer’s death, and hour after hour speeding by in the wild chase of successive chimeras.

While Mr. Justice Lowe’s servant was spurring into town at a pace which made the hollow road resound, and struck red flashes from the stones, up the river, at the Mills, Mistress Mary Matchwell was celebrating a sort of orgie.  Dirty Davy and she were good friends again.  Such friendships are subject to violent vicissitudes, and theirs had been interrupted by a difference of opinion, of which the lady had made a note with a brass candlestick over his eye.  Dirty Davy’s expressive feature still showed the green and yellow tints of convalescence.  But there are few philosophers who forgive so frankly as a thorough scoundrel, when it is his interest to kiss and be friends.  The candlestick was not more innocent of all unpleasant feeling upon the subject than at that moment was Dirty Davy.

Dirty Davy had brought with him his chief clerk, who was a facetious personage, and boozy, and on the confidential footing of a common rascality with his master, who, after the fashion of Harry V. in his nonage, condescended in his frolics and his cups to men of low estate; and Mary Matchwell, though fierce and deep enough, was not averse on occasion, to partake of a bowl of punch in sardonic riot, with such agreeable company.

Charles Nutter’s unexpected coming to life no more affected Mary Matchwell’s claim than his supposed death did her spirits.  Widow or wife, she was resolved to make good her position, and the only thing she seriously dreaded was that an intelligent jury, an eminent judge, and an adroit hangman, might remove him prematurely from the sphere of his conjugal duties, and forfeit his worldly goods to the crown.