m Sarkeld, in one of the carriages sent to meet
him. He was guilty of wasting a prodigious number of minutes with his
trumpery 'How d' ye do's,' and his glances and excuses, and then I had
him up in my room, and the tale was told; it was not Temple's fault if
he did not begin straightforwardly.

I plucked him from his narrator's vexatious and inevitable commencement:
'Temple, tell me, did she go to the altar?'

He answered 'Yes!'

'She did? Then she's a widow?'

'No, she isn't,' said Temple, distracting me by submitting to the lead I
distracted him by taking.

'Then her husband's alive?'

Temple denied it, and a devil seized him to perceive some comicality in
the dialogue.

'Was she married?'

Temple said 'No,' with a lurking drollery about his lips. He added, 'It
's nothing to laugh over, Richie.'

'Am I laughing? Speak out. Did Edbury come to grief overnight in any
way?'

Again Temple pronounced a negative, this time wilfully enigmatical: he
confessed it, and accused me of the provocation. He dashed some laughter
with gravity to prepare for my next assault.

'Was Edbury the one to throw up the marriage? Did he decline it?'

'No,' was the answer once more.

Temple stopped my wrath by catching at me and begging me to listen.

'Edbury was drowned, Richie.'

'Overnight?'

'No, not overnight. I can tell it all in half-a-dozen words, if you'll
be quiet; and I know you're going to be as happy as I am, or I shouldn't
trifle an instant. He went overnight on board the barque Priscilla to
see Mabel Sweetwinter, the only woman he ever could have cared for,
and he went the voyage, just as we did. He was trapped, caged, and
transported; it's a repetition, except that the poor old Priscilla never
came to land. She foundered in a storm in the North Sea. That 's all we
know. Every soul perished, the captain and all. I knew how it would be
with that crew of his some day or other. Don't you remember my saying
the Priscilla was the kind of name of a vessel that would go down with
all hands, and leave a bottle to float to shore? A gin-bottle was found
on our East coast-the old captain must have discovered in the last few
moments that such things were on board--and in it there was a paper, and
the passengers' and crew's names in his handwriting, written as if he
had been sitting in his parlour at home; over them a line--"The Lord's
will is about to be done"; and underneath--"We go to His judgement
resigned and cheerfu