“Vy, there’s Saltwell, Halton, Gadstone, and Southbourne.” “Southbourne?” “Yes, Southbourne, of course. That’s the willage jist afore Hanwitch.” “Southbourne! Southbourne!” repeated Holdsworth, with the old look of bewilderment that invariably entered his face when some familiar name was sounded in his ear. The coachman glanced at him over his shawls, and said to himself, quite in the pit of his stomach. “You’re a rum ’un, you are!” “P’raps you ar’n’t acquainted with the road, sir?” said he. “I think--I am sure I know Southbourne,” replied Holdsworth. “What sort of place is it?” “Vot sort o’ place? Vy, a willage.” “But what kind of village?” “All that I know is this, there’s a hinn there vere they serves you vith werry good liquor. Blow’d if I can tell you anything furder. But that’s my veakness, sir. Vould you believe me, I’ve drove coaches through that willage for the last two-and-twenty year, and may I be bil’d if I can tell you anything about it.” Holdsworth sank into deep thought, while the coachman, twisting his eyes over his shawls, examined his face and clothes with side-long attention; then his curiosity being evidently aroused by something in Holdsworth’s appearance which widely differed from the cut and style of the passengers he was in the habit of carrying, he said: “Might you be a furriner, sir?” “No,” answered Holdsworth. “I’ve a brother in Californy. P’raps you might know them parts, sir?” “I have just returned from Australia.” “Oh!” exclaimed the coachman, looking staggered; “that’s a good vays off ain’t it?” “The other side of the world.” “Gor bless me! A queer place, I’ve heerd. Full of conwicks. One of our guards was sent out there t’other day for abstracting of money from a wallis.” This reference operating upon his sympathies, he entered into a story, as long as a newspaper account, of the trial; “how beautiful the counsill as hadvocated the pore fellow spoke, vich the court vos crowded vith coachmen, who groaned venhever the hadvocate as vos opposed to the guard began to speak, vich behaviour, though it warn’t p’raps quite correck, vasn’t to be stopped nohows, although the judge looks werry fierce, and the counsill kep’ on sayin’, ‘My lud, if this here noise ain’t stopped, I’ll throw the case up,’ vich was just the thing the coachmen vanted” (here he made as though he would poke Holdsworth in the ribs with the butt-end of his whip); “but, lor’ save yer, it was no go.” Holdsworth paid no attention to this story, his mind being engaged in a desperate struggle with memory. Indeed, the word “Southbourne” had affected him as no other allusion had. Pale, dim phantoms of memory, comparable to nothing so much as the phosphorescent outlines which the eye may mark fluctuating in the black sea-water, rose and sank in his mind; and though whispering nothing to his breathless anxiety, clearly proving that the faculty which he had long believed dead was beginning to stir and awaken.