ighborhood was likely to
encourage such unpleasant feelings. He had only executed a righteous
judgment, since there was no law to right him; but even a judge would
avoid the vicinity of a gallows on which hangs a man on whom he had
passed sentence.

He would go into Midlandshire--where he was now supposed to be--until
the affair had blown over. That watching and waiting for the Thing to be
discovered would, he foresaw, be disagreeable, nervous work. And when it
happened, how full the newspapers would be of it! How Solomon got to the
place where he would be found would be as much a matter of marvel as the
object of his going there. If the copper lode--the existence of which
Richard did not doubt--were discovered, as it most likely would be when
the mine became the haunt of the curious and the morbid, it was only too
probable that public attention would be drawn to the owner. The
identification of Robert Balfour with the visitor who had visited
Turlock might then be established, whence would rise suspicion, and
perhaps discovery. Richard had no terrors upon his own account, but he
was solicitous to spare his mother this new shame. He had been hitherto
guiltless in her eyes, or, when blameworthy, the victim of
circumstances; but could her love for him survive the knowledge that he
was a murderer? But why encourage these morbid apprehensions? Was it not
just as likely that the Thing would never be discovered at all? Once set
upon a wrong scent, as folks already were, since the papers had
suggested the man was drowned, why should they ever hit upon the right
one? Wheal Danes had not been explored for half a century. Why should
not Solomon's bones lie there till the judgment-day?

At this point in his reflections the door opened--he was taking his
breakfast in a private sitting-room--and admitted, as he thought, the
waiter. Richard stood in such profound thought that it was almost
stupor, with his arms upon the mantel-piece, and his head resting on his
hands. He did not change his posture; but when the door closed, and
there was silence in place of the expected clatter of the breakfast
things, he turned about, and beheld Harry standing before him--in deep
black, and, as it seemed to him, in widow's weeds!

CHAPTER XLV.

FACE TO FACE.

If Solomon himself, half starved and imbecile with despair, had suddenly
presented himself from his living tomb, Richard could not have been more
astonished than at the appearance