north-east of Tottenham
Court Road; an obscure lodging enough, where he had a couple of
comfortable rooms on the first floor, and where his going out and coming
in attracted little notice. Here, as at the hotel, he chose to assume the
name of Norton instead of his legitimate cognomen.

CHAPTER XIX.

GILBERT ASKS A QUESTION.

Gilbert Fenton called at John Saltram's chambers within a day or two of
his return from Hampshire. He had a strange, almost feverish eagerness to
see his old friend again; a sense of having wronged him for that one
brief moment of thought in which the possibility of his guilt had flashed
across his mind; and with this feeling there was mingled a suspicion that
John Saltram had not acted quite fairly to him; that he had kept back
knowledge which must have come to him as an intimate ally of Sir David
Forster.

He found Mr. Saltram at home in the familiar untidy room, with the old
chaos of books and papers about him. He looked tired and ill, and rose to
greet his visitor with a weary air, as if nothing in the world possessed
much interest for him now-a-days.

"Why, John, you are as pallid as a ghost!" Gilbert exclaimed, grasping
the hand extended to him, and thinking of that one moment in which he had
fancied he was never to touch that hand again. "You have been at the old
work, I suppose--overdoing it, as usual!"

"No, I have been working very little for these last few days. The truth
is, I have not been able to work. The divine afflatus wouldn't come down
upon me. There are times when a man's brain seems to be made of melted
butter. Mine has been like that for the last week or so."

"I thought you were going back to your fishing village near Oxford."

"No, I was not in spirits for that. I have dined two or three times in
Cavendish Square, and have been made much of, and have contrived to
forget my troubles for a few hours."

"You talk of your troubles as if you were very heavily burdened; and
yet, for the life of me, I cannot see what you have to complain of,"
Gilbert said wonderingly.

"Of course not. That is always the case with one's friends--even the best
of them. It's only the man who wears the shoe that knows why it pinches
and galls him. But what have you been doing since I saw you last?"

"I have been in Hampshire."

"Indeed!" said John Saltram, looking him full in the face. "And what took
you into that quarter of the world?"

"I thought you took more interest in my af