“Do you happen to know, Saul, whether the Major wanted me for anything in particular?  He asked me to call here this morning.”

Saul began to consider.  He was a tall, thin, cautious, slow-speaking man, honest as the day, and very much attached to his master.

“Well, sir, he got a letter yesterday morning that seemed to put him out, for I found him swearing over it.  And he said he’d like you to see it.”

“Who was the letter from?  What was it about?”

“It looked like Miss Caroline’s writing, sir, and the postmark was Essex.  As to what it was about—­well, the Major didn’t directly tell me, but I gathered that it might be about—­”

“About what?” questioned Mr Hamlyn, for the man had come to a dead standstill.  “Speak out, Saul.”

“Then, sir,” said Saul, slowly rubbing the top of his head, and the few grey hairs left on it, “I thought—­as you tell me to speak—­it must be something concerning that ship you know of; she that went down on her voyage home, Mr. Philip.”

“The Clipper of the Seas?”

“Just so, sir; the Clipper of the Seas.  I thought it by this,” added Saul:  “that pretty nigh all day afterwards he talked of nothing but that ship, asking me if I should suppose it possible that the ship had not gone down and every soul on board, leastways of her passengers, with her.  ‘Master,’ said I, in answer, ’had that ship not gone down and all her passengers with her, rely upon it, they’d have turned up long before this.’  ‘Ay, ay,’ stormed he, ’and Caroline’s a fool’—­Which of course meant his sister, you know, sir.”

Philip Hamlyn could not make much of this.  So many years had elapsed now since news came out to the world that the unfortunate ship, Clipper of the Seas, went down off the coast of Spain on her homeward voyage, and all her passengers with her, as to be a fact of the past.  Never a doubt had been cast upon any part of the tidings, so far as he knew.

With an uneasy feeling at his heart, he went off to the city, to call upon the brokers, or agents, of the ship:  remembering quite well who they were, and that they lived in Fenchurch Street.  An elderly man, clerk in the house for many years, and now a partner, received him.

“The Clipper of the Seas?” repeated the old gentleman, after listening to what Mr. Hamlyn had to say.  “No, sir, we don’t know that any of her passengers were saved; always supposed they were not.  But lately we have had some little cause to doubt whether one or two might not have been.”

Philip Hamlyn’s heart beat faster.

“Will you tell me why you think this?”