His daughter watched him from the open window as he walked up the narrow lane, amongst the groups of children gathered every here and there upon the dusty pathway. "Heaven have pity upon him, and keep him from sin!" murmured Margaret Wentworth, clasping her hands, and with her eyes still following the retreating figure. James Wentworth jingled the money in his waistcoat-pocket as he walked towards the railway station. He had very little; a couple of sixpences and a few halfpence. Just about enough to pay for a second-class return ticket, and for his glass of gin-and-water at a London tavern. He reached the station three minutes before the train was due, and took his ticket. At half-past three he was in London. But as he was an idle, purposeless man, without friends to visit or money to spend, he was in no hurry to leave the railway station. He hated solitude or quiet; and here in this crowded terminus there was life and bustle and variety enough in all conscience; and all to be seen for nothing: so he strolled backwards and forwards upon the platform, watching the busy porters, the eager passengers rushing to and fro, and meditating as to where he should spend the rest of his afternoon. By-and-by he stood against a wooden pillar in a doorway, looking at the cabs, as, one after another, they tore up to the station, and disgorged their loads. He had witnessed the arrival of a great many different travellers, when his attention was suddenly arrested by a little old man, wan and wizen and near-sighted, feeble-looking, but active, who alighted from a cab, and gave his small black-leather portmanteau into the hands of a porter. This man was Sampson Wilmot, the old confidential clerk in the house of Dunbar, Dunbar, and Balderby. James Wentworth followed the old man and the porter. "I wonder if it _is_ he," he muttered to himself; "there's a likeness—there's certainly a likeness. But it's so many years ago—so many years—I don't suppose I should know him. And yet this man recalls him to me somehow. I'll keep my eye upon the old fellow, at any rate." Sampson Wilmot had arrived at the station about ten minutes before the starting of the train. He asked some questions of the porter, and left his portmanteau in the man's care while he went to get his ticket. James Wentworth lingered behind, and contrived to look at the portmanteau. There was a label pasted on the lid, with an address, written in a business-like hand— "MR. SAMPSON WILMOT, PASSENGER TO SOUTHAMPTON." James Wentworth gave a long whistle. "I thought as much," he muttered; "I thought I couldn't be mistaken!" He went into the ticket-office, where the clerk was standing amongst the crowd, waiting to take his ticket. James Wentworth went up close to him, and touched him lightly on the shoulder. Sampson Wilmot turned and looked him full in the face. He looked, but there was no ray of recognition in that look.