"To-morrow night, darling, you will come to me in my sleep, will you not? Then, when I see you, I shall take it as a token that you have had my letter. "Soon I will write to you again--when the sea shall have given up the secret which it has hidden so carefully for twenty years. Till then, adieu. "Your husband, "Ambrose Murray." This singular document Mr. Murray sealed up carefully, and then addressed it, "To my Wife in Heaven." Then leaving a message for Miss Bellamy, who happened to be out shopping, that he was going out for the evening, he took a hansom to London Bridge and started by the next train for Gravesend, taking the boat and letter with him. He had still some hours to wait; but at midnight, having made a previous arrangement with a boatman, he put off from the pier stairs, and was pulled slowly out to the middle of the black and silent river. A few stars could be seen overhead; now and then the moon shone down through a rift in the clouds. The whole scene was weird and ghostly. The tide was running down rapidly. A cold wind blew faintly across the river, as though it were the last chill breath of the dying day. They halted in mid-stream just as the clocks on shore began to strike twelve. Then Murray took his toy-boat out of its brown paper covering, and having firmly fixed his letter in it by means of a strip of wood intended for that purpose, he leaned over the side and placed it gently on the surface of the stream. On this point, at any rate, poor Murray was still insane. "What are you after, master?" cried the boatman, whose suspicions were beginning to be aroused. "I am sending a letter to my wife," answered Murray, as he lifted his hat for a moment. "See how swiftly it starts on its journey. And now I can see it no longer. But no harm will happen to it. How pleased my darling will be when she reads it!" The boatman said no more, but thinking that he had got a crazy person to deal with, whose next act might be to jump into the river himself, he made all possible haste back to shore. It happened, singularly enough, that on the Wednesday previous to the Saturday fixed on by Peter Byrne for the journey to Wales, Mr. Van Duren entered his room and announced to him and Miriam that he had been called suddenly from home on business of great importance. Byrne, as yet, had given no hint of any intention on his part to go out of town, and he now determined to say nothing about it till after Van Duren's departure. "How long do you expect to be away, Mr. Van Duren?" asked Miriam, as she glanced at him out of her big black eyes. "Four or five days, at the least, I am afraid," he said. "It is a source of great annoyance to me to be called away at this time, but unfortunately there is no way of avoiding it. You may depend upon my getting back as quickly as possible," he added, significantly. "The house will seem very lonely and dull without you."