There he found himself an object of interest and friendly welcome, somewhat heightened by his late adventurous journey in company with Mr. Merlin. The young ladies were deeply shocked at the terrible finale to their acquaintance, slight as it had ever been, with the unhappy man who was now a prisoner and presumably a felon, where once he had shone a star of the first magnitude. Mr. Branksome was sufficiently a man of the world to have always distrusted the handsome and unscrupulous adventurer. Beyond a formal call he had never been encouraged to see much of the interior of the Hall. ‘Terrible affair this, Neuchamp,’ said the host, as the whole party sat in the drawing-room before that evening summons had sounded which few are sufficiently philosophical or sympathetic to decline. ‘I never had a high opinion of Greffham―always distrusted the man, but as to his murdering a couple of poor devils of troopers for the sake of a couple of thousand ounces of gold, why, I should as soon have expected him to have dropped strychnine into one’s soup-plate at the Occidental at lunch.’ ‘Never fancied him,’ said the Colonel; ‘deuced well-dressed, well-set-up fellow; been in a cavalry regiment. But he had a cold-blooded, hard way of looking at one―bad eye too, cruel, devilish cruel―that man has taken life before, I swear―know the expression well, killing is not the fashion much in this country, too young yet―life too valuable―you don’t know the signs of it.’ ‘I can hardly hear to speak of it,’ said the eldest Miss Branksome. ‘To think that _any one_ of education and gentleman-like habit, for he _was_ a gentleman as far as manner, appearance, every outward observance can make one, should have descended so low, gone down into the very pit of murder and theft, for what? What could have driven him to the edge of such a precipice? Surely there must be demons and fiends who have power over men’s souls.’ ‘Extravagance, gambling, the habit of spending money without working for it,’ said her father. ‘Debt in one shape or other is one of the demons allotted to torment mortality in this period of the world’s history. The demoniac of the age is the man who has bills or liabilities coming due without the means to meet them. He may appear ordinarily clothed and in his right mind, but, after some torturing hour, it may be related of him, as of this unhappy wretch, the evil “spirit tare him,” and he “wallowed foaming.’” ‘It seems a wonderful thing that he didn’t apply to some of his friends, doesn’t it?’ queried Mr. Neuchamp. ‘He seemed to have plenty of them. Even if he had not been completely put right they could surely have given him enough to secure breathing time; but murder, robbery, pah! it is purely incredible to me, predicated of a man that we have all met more or less in habits of intimacy.’