One thing more only did he now wish to be made acquainted with, for on that depended the course he should at the present moment adopt with respect to old Jerry himself. He wished to ascertain whether it was the old man's intention to remain and lurk about the town, seeking opportunities for gratifying his revenge, or to return at once to the place whence he had come. “I shall not stay here,” replied Jerry, “for I can trust none of you; but some time, when least it is expected, Mr. Lupton will find me by his side.” Trusting to put Mr. Lupton effectually on his guard against immediate danger, and hoping by his future proceedings ultimately to avert that danger altogether, without any appeal to legal protection or to violence, Colin concluded not to molest the old man at present. Thus, then, he parted with Jerry, forming in his own mind, as he returned townwards, a very ingenious scheme for countermining all the plans of which Rowel and his brother had made Jerry Clink the instrument and depositary. CHAPTER II. _In which Mr. Lupton explains to Colin the story of himself and his lady._ When next Colin Clink met his father the Squire, it was under the influence of such feelings of embarrassment as scarcely left him at liberty to speak; while Mr. Lupton, on his part, received him with that quiet melancholy, though unembarrassed air, which marked emphatically a man upon whom the force of unhappy and unusual circumstances has produced a subdued, though lasting, sense of dejection. “For some time past,” said he, taking Colin's hand, and conducting him to a chair,--“for some time past, my boy, I have felt that one day or other it must come to this. Ever since the time when Providence so singularly threw it in your power to save me from a violent end,--and from _such a_ hand too!--I have been a changed man. By that event Heaven seemed to lay, as it were, a palpable finger upon my soul, the dint of which is everlasting. That from such retributive justice, if justice it could be called, I should have been so saved by one whose very existence itself had called that justice into action, appears to me like a marvellous lesson, in which Providence intended at once to admonish me of my criminality, and at the same time to remind me of its mercy.”