the mere physical exertion
of pulling hard at something were a relief to him at that moment. "I'll
open it again and look it over in a day or two, when I'm away from the
old place here," he resumed, jerking sharply at the last knot--"when I'm
away from the old place, and have got to be my own man again."

He left the shed; regained the road; and stopped, looking up and down,
and all round him, indecisively. Where should he go next? To the grave,
where he had been told that Mary lay buried? No: not until he had first
read all the letters and carefully examined all the objects in the box.
Back to London, and to his promised meeting next morning with Zack? Yes:
nothing better was left to be done--back to London.

Before nightfall he was journeying again to the great city, and to his
meeting with Zack; journeying (though he little thought it) to the place
where the clue lay hid--the clue to the Mystery of Mary Grice.

CHAPTER IV. FATE WORKS, WITH ZACK FOR AN INSTRUMENT.

A quarter of an hour's rapid walking from his father's door, took Zack
well out of the neighborhood of Baregrove Square, and launched him in
vagabond independence loose on the world. He had a silk handkerchief and
sevenpence halfpenny in his pockets--his available assets consisted of
a handsome gold watch and chain--his only article of baggage was a
blackthorn stick--and his anchor of hope was the Pawnbroker.

His first action, now that he had become his own master, was to go
direct to the nearest stationer's shop that he could find, and there to
write the penitent letter to his mother over which his heart had
failed him in the library at Baregrove Square. It was about as awkward,
scrambling, and incoherent an epistolary production as ever was
composed. But Zack felt easier when he had completed it--easier still
when he had actually dropped it into the post-office along with his
other letter to Mr. Valentine Blyth.

The next duty that claimed him was the first great duty of civilized
humanity--the filling of an empty purse. Most young gentlemen in his
station of life would have found the process of pawning a watch in the
streets of London, and in broad daylight, rather an embarrassing one.
But Zack was born impervious to a sense of respectability. He marched
into the first pawnbroker's he came to with as solemn an air of
business, and marched out again with as serene an expression of
satisfaction, as if he had just been drawing a handsome salar