"Oh, pray, don't call her a widow yet, Sir; let us hope her husband may
be found. It's a dreadful thing to be drowned like that on a Sunday
morning; and for one who knows the cliff path so well as he did, too. He
was a hard man, and no favorite, but one forgets that now, of course."

"You have also forgotten the Harvey Sauce, my good girl; oblige me by
bringing it, will you?" said Mr. Balfour, beginning to whistle something
which did not sound like a psalm tune. "You must excuse my
hard-heartedness, but I had not the pleasure of knowing this gentleman."

An hour afterward the solitary guest had left the inn, and was on his
road to Plymouth. His departure caused little surprise, for the weather
was such as to induce no visitor to prolong his stay.

Whether from his long enforced abstinence from society, or from the
unwelcome nature of his thoughts, Robert Balfour was always disinclined
to be alone. His expeditions with Charley in search of pleasure had
been, though he did not find pleasure, more agreeable to him than the
being left to his own resources; and now this was more the case than
ever. He preferred even such company as that which the smoking-room of
an hotel afforded to none at all. The voices of his fellow-creatures
could not shape themselves, as every inarticulate sound did to his
straining ear, into groans and feeble cries for aid. Not twenty-four
hours had elapsed since his prisoner was placed in hold, so that such
sounds of weakness and agony must have been in every sense chimerical;
and yet he heard them. What, then, if these echoes from the tomb should
always be heard? A terrible idea indeed, but one which bred no
repentance. It was not likely that remorse should seize him in the very
place where his hated foe had clutched and consigned him to _his_ living
grave.

The hotel at which he now put up was the same at which he had then
lodged; this public room was the same in which he had smoked his last
cigar upon his fatal visit to the Miners' Bank. He had had only one
companion then, but now it was full of people. By their talk it was
evident that they were townsfolk, and all known to one another; in fact,
it was a tradesmen's club, which met at the _George and Vulture_ on
Sunday nights through the winter months. In spite of his willingness to
be won from his thoughts, he could not fix his attention on the small
local gossip that was going on about him. Men came in and out without
his observing them; and