‘Anyhow,’ thought he, as he rose up, ’my prayer is granted.  God be thanked!’

Once more he looked out towards the ship.  She had spread her beautiful great sails, and was standing out to sea in the glittering path of the descending sun.

He saw that he had been delayed on his road, and had lingered long.  He shook his stiffened limbs, shouldered his knapsack, and prepared to walk on to Hartlepool as swiftly as he could.

CHAPTER XIX

AN IMPORTANT MISSION

Philip was too late for the coach he had hoped to go by, but there was another that left at night, and which reached Newcastle in the forenoon, so that, by the loss of a night’s sleep, he might overtake his lost time.  But, restless and miserable, he could not stop in Hartlepool longer than to get some hasty food at the inn from which the coach started.  He acquainted himself with the names of the towns through which it would pass, and the inns at which it would stop, and left word that the coachman was to be on the look-out for him and pick him up at some one of these places.

He was thoroughly worn out before this happened—­too much tired to gain any sleep in the coach.  When he reached Newcastle, he went to engage his passage in the next London-bound smack, and then directed his steps to Robinson’s, in the Side, to make all the inquiries he could think of respecting the plough his uncle wanted to know about.

So it was pretty late in the afternoon, indeed almost evening, before he arrived at the small inn on the quay-side, where he intended to sleep.  It was but a rough kind of place, frequented principally by sailors; he had been recommended to it by Daniel Robson, who had known it well in former days.  The accommodation in it was, however, clean and homely, and the people keeping it were respectable enough in their way.

Still Hepburn was rather repelled by the appearance of the sailors who sate drinking in the bar, and he asked, in a low voice, if there was not another room.  The woman stared in surprise, and only shook her head.  Hepburn went to a separate table, away from the roaring fire, which on this cold March evening was the great attraction, and called for food and drink.  Then seeing that the other men were eyeing him with the sociable idea of speaking to him, he asked for pen and ink and paper, with the intention of defeating their purpose by pre-occupation on his part.  But when the paper came, the new pen, the unused thickened ink, he hesitated long before he began to write; and at last he slowly put down the words,—­

’DEAR AND HONOURED UNCLE,’——­