Sampson Wilmot had prayed night and day that such a meeting might never take place. For five-and-thirty years it had been delayed. Surely it would not take place now. The old clerk looked nervously at his brother's face. "Joseph," he murmured, "I'd rather you didn't go with me to Southampton; I'd rather you didn't meet Mr. Dunbar. You were very badly treated—cruelly and unjustly treated—nobody knows that better than I. But it's a long time ago, Joseph—it's a very, very long time ago. Bitter feelings die out of a man's breast as the years roll by—don't they, Joseph? Time heals all old wounds, and we learn to forgive others as we hope to be forgiven—don't we, Joseph?" "_You_ may," answered the reprobate, fiercely; "I don't!" He said no more, but sat silent, with his arms folded over his breast. He looked straight before him out of the carriage-window; but he saw no more of the pleasant landscape,—the fair fields of waving corn, with scarlet poppies and deep-blue corn flowers, bright glimpses of sunlit water, and distant villages, with grey church-turrets, nestling among trees. He looked out of the carriage-window, and some of earth's pleasantest pictures sped by him; but he saw no more of that ever-changing prospect than if he had been looking at a blank sheet of paper. Sampson Wilmot sat opposite to him, restless and uneasy, watching his fierce gloomy countenance. The clerk took a ticket for his brother at the first station the train stopped at. But still Joseph was silent. An hour passed by, and he had not yet spoken. He had no love for his brother. The world had hardened him. The consequences of his own sins, falling very heavily upon his head, had embittered his nature. He looked upon the man whom he had once loved and trusted as the primary cause of his disgrace and misery, and this thought influenced his opinion of all mankind. He could not believe in the goodness of any man, remembering, as he did, how he had once trusted Henry Dunbar. The brothers were alone in the carriage. Sampson watched the gloomy face opposite to him for some time, and then, with a weary sigh, he drew his handkerchief over his face, and sank back in the corner of the carriage. But he did not sleep. He was agitated and anxious. A dizzy faintness had seized upon him, and there was a strange buzzing in his ears, and unwonted clouds before his dim eyes. He tried to speak once or twice, but it seemed to him as if he was powerless to form the words that were in his mind. Then his mind began to grow confused. The hoarse snorting of the engine sounded monotonously in his ears: growing louder and louder with every moment; until the noise of it grew hideous and intolerable—a perpetual thunder, deafening and bewildering him. The train was fast approaching Basingstoke, when Joseph Wilmot was suddenly startled from his moody reverie. There was an awful cause for that sudden start, that look of horror in the reprobate's face. CHAPTER IV. THE STROKE OF DEATH.