was a quaint little village, mostly composed of
wooden houses, straggling down to the brink of one of the tidal streams.
On his left hand, further away, rose the gloomy ruins of an abbey,
with a desolate pile of buildings, which covered two sides of a square
attached to it. One of the streams from the sea (called, in Essex,
"backwaters") curled almost entirely round the house. Another, from an
opposite quarter, appeared to run straight through the grounds, and
to separate one side of the shapeless mass of buildings, which was in
moderate repair, from another, which was little better than a ruin.
Bridges of wood and bridges of brick crossed the stream, and gave access
to the house from all points of the compass. No human creature appeared
in the neighborhood, and no sound was heard but the hoarse barking of a
house-dog from an invisible courtyard.

"Which door shall I drive to, sir?" asked the coachman. "The front or
the back?"

"The back," said Captain Wragge, feeling that the less notice he
attracted in his present position, the safer that position might be.

The carriage twice crossed the stream before the coachman made his way
through the grounds into a dreary inclosure of stone. At an open door on
the inhabited side of the place sat a weather-beaten old man, busily
at work on a half-finished model of a ship. He rose and came to the
carriage door, lifting up his spectacles on his forehead, and looking
disconcerted at the appearance of a stranger.

"Is Mr. Noel Vanstone staying here?" asked Captain Wragge.

"Yes, sir," replied the old man. "Mr. Noel came yesterday."

"Take that card to Mr. Vanstone, if you please," said the captain, "and
say I am waiting here to see him."

In a few minutes Noel Vanstone made his appearance, breathless and
eager--absorbed in anxiety for news from Aldborough. Captain Wragge
opened the carriage door, seized his outstretched hand, and pulled him
in without ceremony.

"Your housekeeper has gone," whispered the captain, "and you are to
be married on Monday. Don't agitate yourself, and don't express your
feelings--there isn't time for it. Get the first active servant you can
find in the house to pack your bag in ten minutes, take leave of the
admiral, and come back at once with me to the London train."

Noel Vanstone faintly attempted to ask a question. The captain declined
to hear it.

"As much talk as you like on the road," he said. "Time is too precious
for talking here. How