"I understand," said Sharp; "I have no doubt as how I can settle it. We
learns to know human natur in our profession;--'cause why? we gets at
its blind side. Good night, gentlemen!"

"You seem very pale, Mr. Arthur; you had better go to bed; you promised
your father, you know."

"Yes, I am not well; I will go to bed;" and Arthur rose, lighted his
candle, and sought his room.

"I will see Philip to-morrow," he said to himself; "he will listen to
me."

The conduct of Arthur Beaufort in executing the charge he had undertaken
had brought into full light all the most amiable and generous part
of his character. As soon as he was sufficiently recovered, he had
expressed so much anxiety as to the fate of the orphans, that to quiet
him his father was forced to send for Mr. Blackwell. The lawyer had
ascertained, through Dr. ----, the name of Philip's employer at R----.
At Arthur's request he went down to Mr. Plaskwith; and arriving there
the day after the return of the bookseller, learned those particulars
with which Mr. Plaskwith's letter to Roger Morton has already made
the reader acquainted. The lawyer then sent for Mr. Sharp, the
officer before employed, and commissioned him to track the young man's
whereabout. That shrewd functionary soon reported that a youth every way
answering to Philip's description had been introduced the night of the
escape by a man celebrated, not indeed for robberies, or larcenies, or
crimes of the coarser kind, but for address in all that more large and
complex character which comes under the denomination of living upon
one's wits, to a polite rendezvous frequented by persons of a similar
profession. Since then, however, all clue of Philip was lost. But
though Mr. Blackwell, in the way of his profession, was thus publicly
benevolent towards the fugitive, he did not the less privately represent
to his patrons, senior and junior, the very equivocal character that
Philip must be allowed to bear. Like most lawyers, hard upon all who
wander from the formal tracks, he unaffectedly regarded Philip's flight
and absence as proofs of a reprobate disposition; and this conduct
was greatly aggravated in his eyes by Mr. Sharp's report, by which it
appeared that after his escape Philip had so suddenly, and, as it
were, so naturally, taken to such equivocal companionship. Mr. Robert
Beaufort, already prejudiced against Philip, viewed matters in the same
light as the lawyer; and the story of his supposed predil