“Is he?  Passing from my grip, is he?  No—­no—­Herbert Daker.”

Sharp had sprung from his chair, and was shaking his fist in the air.

“Daker!  Herbert Daker!” I seized Reuben Sharp by the shoulder, and shook him violently.  “What do you know about Herbert Daker?”

Sharp turned upon me a face shattered with rage, and hissed at me.  “What do I know about him?  What do you about him?  Are you his friend?”

“I am not:  never will, nor can be,” was my reply.  Sharp wrung my hand till it felt bloodless.  “Herbert Daker is Matthew Glendore—­Mounseer Glendore.  When did you meet him?”

“On the Boulogne steamer, about three years ago, when he was crossing with his wife.”

“Then!” Sharp exclaimed, and again he took a draught of brandy-and-water.

At this moment Hanger, who had been talking with the landlady, joined us, and whispered—­“Be calm, gentlemen; this is a time for calmness.  Glendore is at hand—­in a little cottage on Monsieur Guibert’s works.  Madame says if we wish to see him alive, we had better lose no time.  The clergyman from Boulogne arrived about an hour ago, and is with him now.  His wife!——­”

“His wife!” Sharp was now a pitiable spectacle.  He finished his glass, and caught Hanger by the collar of his coat—­staring into his face to get at all the truth.  “Glendore’s wife!”

Hanger was as cool as man could be.  He disengaged himself deliberately from the farmer’s grip, put the table between them, and went smoothly on with the further observation he had to make!

“I repeat, according to the landlady, whose word we have no reason to doubt, his wife is with him—­and his mother!”

Sharp struck the table and roared that it was impossible.  I stood in hopeless bewilderment.

“Would it be decent to intrude at such a moment?”

“Decent!” Sharp was frantically endeavouring to button up his coat.

“D—­n it, decent!  Which is the way?  My girl—­my poor girl!”

“Show him,” I contrived to say to Hanger, and he took the landlady’s directions, while I passed my arm through Reuben Sharp’s.  We stumbled and blundered along in Hanger’s footsteps, round muddy corners, past heaps of yellow ore, Sharp muttering and cursing and gesticulating by the way.  We came suddenly to a halt at the little green door of a four-roomed cottage.

“Knock! knock!” Sharp shouted, pressing with his whole weight against the door.  “Let me see her!—­the villain!—­Mounseer Glendore!—­No, no, Herbert Daker!”

The power of observation is at its quickest in moments of intense excitement.  I remember looking with the utmost calmness at Sharp’s face and figure, as he stood gasping before the door of Herbert Daker’s lodging.  It was the head of a satyr in anger.

“Daker—­Herbert Daker!” Sharp cried.

The door was suddenly thrown open, and an English clergyman, unruffled and full of dignity, stood in the entrance.  Sharp was a bold, untutored man; but he dared not force his way past the priest.