ometers was great
among the sailors, with whom he did a very irregular sort of
traffic, conducted, often without much use of money, but rather on
the principle of barter, they bringing him foreign coins and odd
curiosities picked up on their travels in exchange for his services
to their nautical instruments or their watches. If he had ever had
capital to extend his business, he might have been a rich man; but
it is to be doubted whether he would have been as happy as he was
now in his queer little habitation of two rooms, the front one being
both shop and workshop, the other serving the double purpose of
bedroom and museum.

The skill of this odd-tempered, shabby old man was sometimes sought
by the jeweller who kept the more ostentatious shop in the High
Street; but before Darley would undertake any 'tickle' piece of
delicate workmanship for the other, he sneered at his ignorance, and
taunted and abused him well. Yet he had soft places in his heart,
and Hester Rose had found her way to one by her patient, enduring
kindness to his bed-ridden niece. He never snarled at her as he did
at too many; and on the few occasions when she had asked him to do
anything for her, he had seemed as if she were conferring the favour
on him, not he on her, and only made the smallest possible charge.

She found him now sitting where he could catch the most light for
his work, spectacles on nose, and microscope in hand.

He took her watch, and examined it carefully without a word in reply
to her. Then he began to open it and take it to pieces, in order to
ascertain the nature of the mischief.

Suddenly he heard her catch her breath with a checked sound of
surprise. He looked at her from above his spectacles; she was
holding a watch in her hand which she had just taken up off the
counter.

'What's amiss wi' thee now?' said Darley. 'Hast ta niver seen a
watch o' that mak' afore? or is it them letters on t' back, as is so
wonderful?'

Yes, it was those letters--that interlaced, old-fashioned cipher.
That Z. H. that she knew of old stood for Zachary Hepburn, Philip's
father. She knew how Philip valued this watch. She remembered having
seen it in his hands the very day before his disappearance, when he
was looking at the time in his annoyance at Sylvia's detention in
her walk with baby. Hester had no doubt that he had taken this watch
as a matter of course away with him. She felt sure that he would not
part with this relic of his dead fa