Bommaney could possibly have left them, furtively pressing the notes against his breast meanwhile, and once, at a quiet interval, when Bommaney had sunk into his former stupor, venturing to steal a hand to the pocket in which the stolen money lay, caressing the edges of the notes with the tips of his fingers.

'I'm sure,' said Bommaney, as the cab pulled up at the gate of the quadrangle, 'that we shall find them here.' He spoke with a tremulous uncertainty, and so obviously appealed for a confirmation of his hope, that Barter felt constrained to answer,

'Oh, we are bound to find them.'

The striking of a wax vesta at the door of the chambers, the shaky hunt for the key, the well-known obstinacy of the lock, the opening of the door, the fevered working of Bommaney's fingers, and the flushed eagerness of his face, were all memorable to young Barter for many and many a day. They entered together the room in which their interview had taken place; and Barter, nursing the remnant of the flaming vesta, lit the gas with it, and then, dropping it on the floor, set his foot upon it, and looked at his companion.

'Where do you think you left the notes, sir?' he asked. 'Have you any idea? I think you took out some papers here. You wanted to consult my father about them, I fancy, and, if I remember, you returned them to your pocket.'

Bommaney stood looking about him on the floor, trailing the point of his walking-cane purposelessly hither and thither; and it was at this moment, seeing how confused and broken his victim seemed, that young Mr. Barter tasted the first flavour of safety.

'I don't see anything,' he said.

'Did you,' Bommaney asked him, with both trembling hands grasping the knob of his walking-cane, and shaking in appeal before the unsuspected thief—' did you lock any papers away before you left?'

As a matter of fact, young Barter had not had any papers to lock away that evening after Bommaney's departure; but he thought the trick worth playing, and, producing his keys again, opened the heavy iron safe which stood against the wall.

'Yes,' he said, with an air of hopeful alacrity. 'By Jove, I did!' He stood aside, with an outstretched hand, and motioned Bommaney to examine the contents of the safe. There was a parchment there, there were half a dozen bundles of documents tied in pink tape and docketed; but there were no bank-notes.

'You know,' said Bommaney, with a fretful wail, 'I must have left them here; I couldn't have left them anywhere else. I put it to you—could I?'

Barter looked at him mournfully, with raised eyebrows. There was just a hint of expostulation in his raised eyebrows, and in the expression of his voice.

'You see, sir,' he said, waving his white hands—' you see for yourself, there's nothing here.'

Bommaney walked to a chair, and, sitting down there, lifted up his voice and wept. 'I've been an honest man, by God! all my life long; and now I'm not merely ruined, but I shall be taken for a thief.' He cried bitterly after this outburst, with his head between his hands. His hat fell off, and his walking-stick tumbled noisily to the floor. Mr. Barter picked them up, and, having set them on the table, looked at the shaking shoulders, and listened to the ruined man's sobs and wailings. It was a pity—of course it was a pity—but young Mr. Barter really did not see how it was in his power to help it.

III

On a chill spring evening the sunset over London gave a brief radiance of colour to the dull gray roof and smoke-stained chimneys of many thoroughfares. Shadows thickened in the eastern skies as if fold after fold of finest crape were drawn over the field of watery and opalescent light the fallen sun had left behind it. In one great thoroughfare running east and west the sky-line of the houses stood distinct, and bathed in light of many colours; whilst down below there was a wall of shadow. Two parallel walls of shadow rose from a shadowy level, and the dusk had a thousand indistinguishable voices.

The shadowy lines became accented by twin rows of flickering fire, the rear jets seen with a blurred halo of mist round each of them, the halo crawling feebly within itself, tormented by a feeble wind. The long vista of pavement became chequered like a chessboard, with patches of light from shop windows. Gable Inn, staring at the growing darkness with a single fiery eye, looked like a Rip Van Winkle. It had been old when Chaucer and the knights and ladies of whom he sang were young; and its hoary stunted angles and squat chimney cowls had the grave and impassive aspect proper to great age. It has stood there now for over seven hundred years hoarding a growing store of secrets. It is roughly picturesque in every detail, and its every chamber is a triumph of narrowness, obscurity, and inconvenience.

In the quadrangle the shadows climbed the sturdy walls as if they were an exhalation from the paving-stones. The dim staircase sent down all manner of muffled and echoing voices. Footsteps sounded, and the clang of doors, and the shriek of unwilling keys in rusty locks, and the hurrying traffic of the street without, softened by the moist atmosphere, was like the fading echo of following feet upon the stairs.

Lights sprang up in the basement windows, telling of protractive legal labours. Lights twinkled in the garrets, telling of lonely study or noisy conviviality in the coming hours of darkness. At length one side of the quadrangle viewed by a solitary watcher from a third-floor window of the opposing side, winked with a hundred windows through the wet air and deepening shadow like a blear-eyed Argus.

This watcher, lounging at his own window, was Mr. Philip Bommaney, recently self-entitled the 'Solitary of Gable Inn.' He was eight-and-twenty years of age or thereabouts, a broad-shouldered, deep-chested, manly-looking fellow, with curling brown hair, and a face expressive of pugnacity, good-humour, and many capacities. He was a little weary now, after a long day of satisfactory work. He watched the mounting shadows, and listened to the weird gamut of the wind among the telegraph lines, until the outer voices made his own dull room seem homely. One ruddy tongue of flame from the expiring fire in the grate played on the narrow walls and low ceiling, and woke twinkling reflections in the spare and battered furniture. A man's dwelling-place is always an index to his character when its arrangement depends upon himself; and signs of Philip Bommaney's nature and pursuits were visible in plenty here. There were symmetrical rows of books on the shelves flanking the fire-place. An orderly stack of newspapers occupied one corner of the room, and a set of boxing-gloves lay on top of the pile, and a pair of dumb-bells beside it. A shaded reading-lamp stood upon the table in the midst of a great litter of papers. The barrels of a huge elephant gun flashed dimly from the wall as the firelight played upon them, and two or three lighter weapons were ranged together lower down.

He turned from the window and lit the lamp, and, wheeling round, held up the light to a photograph, and studied it with a pleased face. It was the portrait of a pretty girl, very sweetly grave, and looking as if it could be very sweetly vivacious. When he had looked at it for a longish time he nodded and smiled, as if the pictured lips had actually spoken to him. There was a tumbler standing beside the photograph with a bunch of hothouse flowers in it, the one bright spot of colour in the dingy chamber. He took this in his disengaged hand, and nodding and smiling anew at the pretty girl's portrait, he turned about again, and walked into a bedroom beyond a narrow and inconvenient little window. The strident voice of the clock over the entrance of the old Hall, answered or anticipated from multitudinous spires in the City far and near, sounded as Philip entered his bedroom. He stood and listened, counting six jarring strokes.