“Only my register, sir. By the way, could you read that name?” He pushed the book across the counter. “B. Corselas,” in an unsteady, childish hand stared Mr. Erle in the face. B. Corselas, and his father, neither to hold nor to bind! There could be nothing in it, and yet--Mr. Erle was startled. “No,” he said coolly. “Cassels, or something. Why?” “Well, she was a slip of a thing,” dryly, “and she bought laudanum. She had a queer look about her--very light eyes!” “Tall, charming?” scoffingly. “No, Mr. Erle. Childish and frightened-looking. Will you have a check, or notes? They’re both here. She would have been handsome if she hadn’t looked hungry.” “Notes,” said Erle slowly. “You’ll get into trouble yet, Peters, with your drugs. Good night!” He was richer than he had been for many a day; but he was not thinking of that as he got into his cab and drove back to Euston. It was queer that he felt so assured that he had seen at Blackpool the very girl who had signed Peter’s book. He dismissed his cab at the Euston Hotel, but before he entered it he returned to the station. A few inquiries made him surer than ever, but the “B. Corselas” staggered him. It might be all right, but if, after all these years, it was going to be all wrong, it was no joke. He wrote a brief note to his father, for there was no sense in trusting a country telegraph office, and then retired to bed. “Paris for me!” he reflected as he put out the light. “If there is anything queer the farther I’m out of it the better. Besides, other things. But, of course, it’s all a silly coincidence.” He little knew the trouble it would have saved him if he had spoken kindly to that girl at Blackpool. CHAPTER VI. LORD ERCELDONNE MARKS THE KING. On the shore of St. Anne’s, that is a day’s walking from Blackpool, was the wreck of a brig. Dismantled, gaunt in the daylight, black and gruesome at night, it lay canted on the beach a grim sign-post on a coast where the life-boat men are seldom idle. The lamplighter looked at it as he finished his rounds in the dusk. “’Tis said it’s haunted,” he remarked to himself, “but ghosts have quieter tongues than Margery! And ’tis the only place she’ll not rout me out of.” His conscience was not clear nor his legs quite reliable as he made an unostentatious progress over the shingle to the wreck. He was not drunk to his own mind, but he would be drunk to a certainty in the eyes of the rate-payers and his wife. Mr. Ebenezer Davids had no mind to be brought up before the vestry or the domestic tribunal. He scrambled on board the weather-beaten hull of the _Highland Mary_, and made his way below, down a companionway that slanted at a discomposing angle. The darkness of the cabin was musty, but Mr. Davids was not squeamish. He felt his way to a moldy locker and collapsed on it. Something rustled, but he cared nothing for rats. He only turned more comfortably and let the joyful slumber of semi-intoxication possess him utterly.