the old Hall rose before them. It was
a great Tudor house of mullioned windows, traceries, and battlements; of
stately towers, moss-grown balustrades, and statues darkening with the
fog that was already hiding the angles and wings of its huge bulk. A
peacock spread its ostentatious tail on the broad stone steps before the
portal; a flight of rooks from the leafless elms rose above its stacked
and twisted chimneys. After all, how little had this stately incarnation
of the vested rights and sacred tenures of the past in common with the
laughing rover he had left in London that morning! And thinking of the
destinies that the captain held so lightly in his hand, and perhaps not
a little of the absurdity of his own position to the confiding young
girl beside him, for a moment he half hated him.

The fog deepened as they reached the station, and, as it seemed to
Randolph, made their parting still more vague and indefinite, and it
was with difficulty that he could respond to the young girl's frank hope
that he would soon return to them. Yet he half resolved that he would
not until he could tell her all.

Nevertheless, as the train crept more and more slowly, with halting
signals, toward London, he buoyed himself up with the hope that Captain
Dornton would still try conclusions for his patrimony, or at least come
to some compromise by which he might be restored to his rank and name.
But upon these hopes the vision of that great house settled firmly upon
its lands, held there in perpetuity by the dead and stretched-out hands
of those that lay beneath its soil, always obtruded itself. Then the
fog deepened, and the crawling train came to a dead stop at the next
station. The whole line was blocked. Four precious hours were hopelessly
lost.

Yet despite his impatience, he reentered London with the same dazed
semi-consciousness of feeling as on the night he had first arrived.
There seemed to have been no interim; his visit to the rectory and Hall,
and even his fateful news, were only a dream. He drove through the same
shadow to the hotel, was received by the same halo-encircled lights that
had never been put out. After glancing through the halls and reading
room he hurriedly made his way to his companion's room. The captain was
not there. He quickly summoned the waiter. The gentleman? Yes; Captain
Dornton had left with his servant, Redhill, a few hours after Mr. Trent
went away. He had left no message.

Again condemned to wait i