me when you do come, I shall leave England and take to
something desperate.

"I have got a new friend--the best and most interesting fellow in the
world. He has been half his life in the wilds of America; so, if you
don't give me the go-by, I shall bring him to see your picture of
Columbus.

"I feel so miserable, and have got such a headache, that I can't write
any more. Ever yours,

"Z. THORPE, JUN."

After directing this letter, and placing it in his pocket to be put
into the post by his own hand, Zack looked towards the door and
hesitated--advanced a step or two to go out--and ended by returning
to the writing-table, and taking a fresh sheet of paper out of the
portfolio before him.

"I can't leave the old lady (though she won't forgive me) without
writing a line to keep up her spirits and say goodbye," he thought, as
he dipped the pen in the ink, and began in his usual dashing, scrawling
way. But he could not get beyond "My dear Mother." The writing of those
three words seemed to have suddenly paralyzed him. The strong hand that
had struck out so sturdily all through the fight, trembled now at
merely touching a sheet of paper. Still, he tried desperately to write
something, even if it were only the one word, "Goodbye."--tried till the
tears came into his eyes, and made all further effort hopeless.

He crumpled up the paper and rose hastily, brushing away the tears with
his hand, and feeling a strange dread and distrust of himself as he did
so. It was rarely, very rarely, that his eyes were moistened as they
were moistened now. Few human beings have lived to be twenty years of
age without shedding more tears than had ever been shed by Zack.

"I can't write to her while I'm at home, and I know she's in the next
room to me. I will send her a letter when I'm out of the house, saying
it's only for a little time, and that I'm coming back when the angry
part of this infernal business is all blown over." Such was his
resolution, as he tore up the crumpled paper, and went out quickly into
the passage.

He took his hat from the table. _His_ hat? No: he remembered that it
was the hat which had been taken from the man at the tavern. At the most
momentous instant of his life--when his heart was bowing down before the
thought of his mother--when he was leaving home in secret, perhaps for
ever--the current of his thoughts could be incomprehensibly altered in
its course by the influence of s