s
his habit to trust no one, his boast that he trusted no one. But he was
obliged to name some one for his executor, and he named me."

"Shall you consider it your duty to seek out or advertise for Percival
Nowell?" asked Gilbert.

"I shall be in no hurry to do that, in the absence of any proof of his
daughter's death. My first duty would be to look for her."

"God grant you may be more fortunate than I have been! There is my card,
Mr. Medler. You will be so good as to let me have a line immediately, at
that address, if you obtain any tidings of Mrs. Holbrook."

"I will do so."

CHAPTER XXX.

STRICKEN DOWN.

A hansom carried Gilbert Fenton to the Temple, without loss of time.
There was a fierce hurry in his breast, a heat and fever which he had
scarcely felt since the beginning of his troubles; for his lurking
suspicion of his friend had gathered shape and strength all at once, and
possessed his mind now to the exclusion of every other thought.

He ran quickly up the stairs. The outer and inner doors of John Saltram's
chambers were both ajar. Gilbert pushed them open and went in. The
familiar sitting-room looked just a little more dreary than usual. The
litter of books and papers, ink-stand and portfolio, was transferred to
one of the side-tables, and in its place, on the table where his friend
had been accustomed to write, Gilbert saw a cluster of medicine-bottles,
a jug of toast-and-water, and a tray with a basin of lukewarm
greasy-looking beef-tea.

The door between the two rooms stood half open, and from the bedchamber
within Gilbert heard the heavy painful breathing of a sleeper. He went to
the door and looked into the room. John Saltram was lying asleep, in an
uneasy attitude, with both arms thrown over his head. His face had a
haggard look that was made all the more ghastly by two vivid crimson
spots upon his sunken cheeks; there were dark purple rings round his
eyes, and his beard was of more than a week's growth.

"Ill," Gilbert muttered, looking aghast at this dreary picture, with
strangely conflicting feelings of pity and anger in his breast; "struck
down at the very moment when I had determined to know the truth."

The sick man tossed himself restlessly from side to side in his feverish
sleep, changed his position two or three times with evident weariness and
pain, and then opened his eyes and stared with a blank unseeing gaze at
his friend. That look, without one ray of recognition, wen